


Wake the Storm

by bedlamsbard



Series: Ouroboros [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, Parallel Universes, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 75,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Considering that he had picked up what was probably a Sith artifact, promptly passed out in the middle of a war zone, and apparently woken up twenty years in the future with Obi-Wan having taken up residence in his head, Anakin thought he was entitled to have a few questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Return of a Jedi

**Author's Note:**

> Set after The Clone Wars season five and before RotS in the PT timeline, and between ESB and RotJ in the OT timeline.

When Anakin woke up, he was lying flat on his back, blinking up at the familiar grayish ceiling of a star destroyer cabin. _Rex or Obi-Wan must have brought me back to the_ Resolute, he thought blurrily, raising one hand to rub at his eyes. The movement made him realize that he wasn’t in his rack, but on the floor instead.

“Obi-Wan?” he said out loud, even though he couldn’t sense his former master anywhere nearby. “Snips?”

No, blast it, Ahsoka wouldn’t be here. He kept forgetting.

Groaning, he pushed himself up to a seated position and looked around. He realized almost immediately that he wasn’t on the _Resolute_ , since he had never seen a room like this there. He could sense the ship’s crew moving around outside the cabin, but no familiar presences, no one that he recognized. No Jedi.

No Jedi, he realized as his hand fell to the lightsaber on his hip, but the shadow of the Dark Side hung heavy over the entire ship. Anakin rose to his feet, taking his lightsaber off his belt just to have the reassuring weight of the hilt in his hand. He reached out with his mind, relaxing slightly as he realized that there wasn’t a presence attached to that sense of darkness. It might have been nothing more than the cloud that had swallowed the Force since the war had begun, but somehow Anakin didn’t think that it was. It felt different somehow. Closer. More personal. He had no idea what that meant.

Swallowing back the faint nausea left behind by his sense of the Dark Side, Anakin studied the room. It was about the size of a captain’s cabin, maybe a little larger, but instead of a bunk, he saw what he eventually identified as a round life support pod, meant to provide filtered oxygen and other atmospheric gases to the occupant. Anakin had seen them in medcenters before, where they were used to provide support for those who had suffered severe damage to their lungs and other internal organs, usually due to fire or poison gases. To Anakin’s eyes it seemed obscenely large, used for a very tall, broad human man or a nonhuman like a Houk or a Wookiee. Elsewhere in the cabin he found a holoprojection platform and maintenance tools appropriate for lightsaber repair, but nothing that hinted at the room’s occupant except for that sense of the Dark Side.

A single clear note rang through the cabin, making Anakin stiffen as a voice came over the intercom by the door. _“Lord Vader, our sensors picked up a strange energy signature originating from your quarters. Are you well, my lord?”_

Something in Anakin recognized the name, even though he couldn’t remember ever hearing it before. He clenched his fist on his lightsaber hilt, so tightly that he heard the leather of his glove creak. It was a Sith moniker if he had ever heard one.

He didn’t dare respond. The last thing he remembered was the assault on Odryn, the old colony world of the Feeorins. He and Rex had launched their attack from the north, while Obi-Wan and Cody took the south, hoping to outflank the Separatist forces that had occupied the planet’s thin habitable zone. The planet wasn’t strategically important, but a rumor had persisted for millennia that a warehouse of Sith relics had been lost there during the Mandalorian Wars. Once word had gotten out that the Separatists had taken the planet, it had been a desperate race between Dooku’s Dark Acolytes and the Jedi to see who could find the relics, if they really existed, first. Anakin had thought that they had managed it. He and Rex had been poking around in one of the burned-out Feeorin villages near the dig site abandoned by University of Alderaan archaeologists when the front had come too close for comfort, waiting for Obi-Wan and his troops to catch up to them. Something in the Force had attracted him, and Anakin had reached for it –

And woken up here. Wherever _here_ was. If a Sith artifact had brought him here, Anakin was certain that it wasn’t a good place to be.

Another chime sounded and the intercom crackled again. _“Lord Vader? I don’t wish to disturb you, but –”_

Anakin could sense the man just outside the cabin’s door. His fear gnawed at Anakin’s mind, like one of Tatooine’s womprats – fear of what he expected to find inside, fear of what would happen to him if he didn’t persist.

 _How can the Sith hope to rule if all they create is fear?_ Anakin thought, disgusted, but he already knew the answer. Fear was power. He had known that all his life.

_“My lord, I’m afraid that I must enter in order to determine your well-being. I mean you no disrespect –”_

_Anakin!_

He jumped at the voice, which rang clearly through his head, and looked frantically around. “Master?”

Obi-Wan was nowhere to be seen, but Anakin could feel him as strongly as if Obi-Wan had been standing beside him. _Anakin, you must not let them see you_ , he said. _Quickly, into the ventilation shaft._

Anakin had spent the past twelve years trusting Obi-Wan to have his back; he wasn’t about to stop now. He took two quick steps sideways, using a trickle of Force energy to push the vent’s grille above him out of place, and leapt straight upwards. He caught himself on the side of the vent and pulled himself up the rest of the way, replacing the grille just in time.

The cabin’s door slid open, producing a trim officer in what looked like a Republic Navy uniform. The man radiated anxiety so strongly that for a moment it actually blanketed the rest of Anakin’s senses. He looked around, saying, “Lord Vader? Are you here?”

The ventilation shaft was a narrow fit for a human of Anakin’s size. He crouched at the edge of the vent, still holding his lightsaber, and watched the man pace nervously around the cabin, repeating, “My lord?” every few minutes. He paused to look at the life support pod, but the console indicated that it was unoccupied and he didn’t seem inclined to investigate further. Eventually he took his comlink from his belt and said, “Lieutenant Zurita to the bridge. Lord Vader is not in his quarters.”

 _Quickly now,_ Obi-Wan’s voice whispered. _It’s about to get very crowded and I don’t think that you want to linger, my old friend._

“Easy for you to say,” Anakin muttered. “You’re not really here.”

_That’s a matter of perspective._

“From my perspective, you’re not the one stuffed in a metal tube,” Anakin replied, the words barely more than a breath, and began to crawl. He didn’t have enough room to clip his lightsaber to his belt and was forced to keep holding it, squirming awkwardly along with his right hand clenched in a fist. Well, at least that was the hand he didn’t have to worry about cramping.

He knew the guts of a star destroyer better than most Jedi, but that didn’t mean much when he wasn’t sure where on the cruiser he actually was – or if he was actually on a star destroyer, for that matter.

 _The technical designation is super star destroyer, actually,_ Obi-Wan offered helpfully. _It’s been a few years, but the design is essentially unchanged, though it’s a bit larger than what you’re used to._

“A few _years_?” Anakin hissed. “How many is a ‘few’, exactly?”

He felt Obi-Wan hesitate for an instant before he said, _Twenty-two._

Anakin had to stop and put his head down on his hands for a minute. “We’re going to have a serious talk later, okay?”

_That seems fair. Keep crawling._

Since there didn’t seem to be any better options, Anakin kept crawling.

It took him about twenty minutes to reach somewhere that looked promising. He’d passed several rooms that just looked like more officers’ quarters, most of them occupied, which didn’t do him any good. He kept expecting to hear a call for this Lord Vader to come over the ship-wide intercom, but so far it had remained quiet. Maybe the ship’s captain didn’t want to worry the crew.

He paused above the grate, reaching out with the Force to make sure that his initial impression was correct and there was no one in the room below him, then eased the grille out of the frame and slid it aside. He dropped lightly down, hanging by one hand from the frame as he pulled the grille back into place before letting go. He landed with a soft thump on the durasteel floor of the locker room, hooking his lightsaber back onto his belt.

Since the war had begun, he had been in dozens of locker rooms like this, stopping in for a few minutes before or after missions to give an encouraging word to the troopers under his command. Twenty years or not, this one was nearly identical to all the others – the slightly stale smell of hundreds of men kept in close confines, blaster oil, mud, and adrenaline. Familiar too were the racks of white clone trooper armor and helmets, though upon picking one up, Anakin saw that the design had changed. The armor was thin and less resistant to blasterfire, without the electronic interface he was accustomed too. Most surprising to him was that the sizes differed, though they were all meant for human males. Clone armor, though it tended to accumulate personal quirks over various campaigns, was functionally identical except among different branches of the GAR.

 _There are very few clones remaining in the Imperial Army._ Out of the corner of his eye, Anakin thought he saw Obi-Wan, but when he turned to look there was no one there. _Clones began being phased out of the stormtrooper ranks some years ago._

“Stormtroopers?” Anakin repeated.

_The name was changed after the war…ended. By then the Emperor’s intent was clear, though I don’t suppose that many of the clones understood what that really meant._

“Emperor?” Anakin turned the helmet over in his hands. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

_It’s a long story, and now isn’t the time, I’m afraid._

“Chalk it on the list of other things you’re going to explain when we have time,” Anakin said. There was another flicker at the corner of his vision and for an instant he thought he saw Obi-Wan as he had been ten years ago, clean-shaven and short-haired and terribly intense. “Starting with how in blazes you’re speaking to me. Neither of us is telepathic.”

 _To answer your first question, I’m not a hallucination,_ Obi-Wan said, sounding rather prim. _Not technically._

“I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a non-technical hallucination,” Anakin said. He started to replace the helmet on the shelf, then stopped, his attention caught by the neatly-lettered label on the inside. “The Five-Oh-First? _My_ Five-Oh-First?”

 _Not Anakin Skywalker’s command,_ Obi-Wan corrected him. _Darth Vader’s command. I believe they call themselves Vader’s Fist._

The betrayal stung at Anakin as he set the helmet down. “Well, that’s just rude.”

 _‘Rude’ isn’t exactly the word that I’d use._ Was it Anakin’s imagination, or was he talking _around_ some kind of unpleasant truth? Anakin frowned in the direction that he lost thought he’d last seen Obi-Wan’s image, though he doubted that it really mattered.

_There’s a general access terminal over there. It should have a map of the ship._

“Don’t try and distract me, Obi-Wan,” Anakin muttered. He didn’t know how he knew which direction to look in, but he found the terminal easily enough and bent over it to poke around until he found a map of the super star destroyer. It didn’t include a handy “you are here” tab, but after a few minutes of puzzling out the route he had taken from Vader’s quarters, he located the locker room and the nearest hangar bay.

He felt Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force shiver and vanish for an instant, then his former master returned. _There are several empty shuttles there,_ he reported. _Normally these have a crew of six, but in a pinch one skilled pilot will do._

“Well, lucky for you,” Anakin said, “they don’t come much more skilled than me.”

 _In my present condition I have little need of a shuttle,_ Obi-Wan said, with gentle patience.

“Don’t be stupid,” Anakin said, straightening up from the terminal once he was certain that he’d memorized the map. Obi-Wan was right; the super star destroyer wasn’t much different from a regular star destroyer, just grossly oversized. “If you’re talking to me, you have to be around here somewhere. Neither of us is powerful enough to accomplish this kind of Force-projection over more than a few kilometers. Are you in the detention block? I’ll come and get you and then we can both get off this tin can.” He touched his lightsaber. “I don’t care how long it’s been for you. No one gets left behind, remember? It won’t be the first time I’ve rescued you, Master.”

 _Anakin._ He felt Obi-Wan sigh. _I’m not on this vessel. Get to a shuttle now before an alarm is raised. It’s only a matter of time._

Still Anakin hesitated. “Where are you, then?”

_I’ll explain later. Please, Anakin, don’t linger._

It was the “please” that got him. Obi-Wan spent plenty of time telling him what to do, but he seldom asked politely. If the trickle of fear that accompanied the words hadn’t already been enough – Anakin could count on one hand the number of times that he had felt Obi-Wan well and truly afraid – that would have done it.

“Okay, Obi-Wan,” he said, turning towards the door. “If you’re sure.”

_I am. More than you can possibly imagine._

Well, that wasn’t terrifying at all. Anakin was reaching for the button to open the door when it slid open in front of him, revealing half a dozen troopers in the process of removing their helmets. The two in the lead froze when they saw him.

“Hey!” said one. “You can’t be in here!”

“Sorry,” Anakin said, and slammed a kick into his jaw. His friend was swinging his blaster up when Anakin kicked that out of his hands, pulling his lightsaber off his belt and igniting it.

He didn’t expect the reaction that that prompted.

 _“Jedi!”_ someone yelled, sounding completely terrified, and a second later Anakin found himself the target of several dozen blaster bolts. He deflected them easily into walls and floor and ceiling, his lightsaber moving in a blinding blue blur only a little hampered by the narrow space he found himself in. His lightsaber struck sparks off the doorway as he fought his way into the hallway, a little reluctant to strike the killing blows that came so easily to him these days. They might be shooting to kill, but they were still the 501st, _his_ 501st, and they were wearing the same armor that the men he trusted his life to every day wore.

 _Yes, well, they_ are _shooting to kill, Anakin, so you had best respond in kind!_

“Okay, Obi-Wan,” Anakin muttered, his lightsaber sweeping out to cleave one trooper from hip to shoulder, taking another’s head in the same movement. He deflected a blast back into the unprotected neck of a third, grabbing the last man with the Force and slamming him into the wall.

More blasterfire came from both ends of the hallway. Anakin swore, his lightsaber flashing back and forth, in front and behind himself as he deflected the bolts. He retreated back into the locker room, shutting the door with a wave of his hand and sliding his lightsaber into the control pad to destroy it. Deactivating his lightsaber and clipping it to his belt, he leapt straight up, shoving the grate out of the way as he hauled himself back up into the ventilation shaft. He pushed it back into place, calling up a mental image of the holomap – which hadn’t covered the ventilation shafts, of course – and started to crawl.

He hadn’t gone more than five meters before an alarm started blaring through the ship, the sound slightly dulled by the walls of the ventilation shaft. Anakin crawled a little faster, cursing under his breath. It wouldn’t take them long to get in through the door. Once they found the room empty, it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that the only place he could have gone was into the ventilation shafts. If the super star destroyer’s crew was directly proportional to its size, then there could be as many as three hundred thousand beings looking for him.

“You can’t cause a distraction on the other side of the ship, can you?” he muttered.

 _Afraid not,_ Obi-Wan said apologetically.

“Too bad.” Anakin paused before the next grate, peering cautiously down into the room below. It looked like a refresher – an _empty_ refresher, which was more important. He lifted the grille out of place, set it aside, and dropped lightly to the floor, pulling his lightsaber off his belt. He rested his free hand lightly against the door before he opened it, reaching out with the Force. He didn’t think there was anyone in the corridor; he got the sense that most of the troopers who had responded to the alarm were gathered in the next corridor over, still trying to get into the locker room. It probably gave him a few minutes.

Anakin hit the control for the door and stepped out into the hallway, his grip tight on his lightsaber hilt. There was no one in sight; Anakin took a breath and reached out to draw the Force around him, using a Jedi trick meant to make anyone who saw him believe that he was just out of sight, that he had turned a corner or gone into another room. It hurt his head – it took a lot of energy to affect other beings that way – but it was preferable to getting caught. He used a little more of the Force to give him speed, moving so quickly that to human eyes he would appear as little more than a blur. Between the two, it would take well-tuned sensors, a strong-minded and sharp-eyed non-human, or a Force-user to find him.

He dashed down the corridor in the direction of the hangar, taking a turn so sharply that he nearly overbalanced and fell over. Above him, the alarm was still blaring, but Anakin was sunk so deeply that in his trance that he was aware of it only very distantly. He ran past a group of troopers headed in the direction that he had just left, barely noticing when one or two of them stopped to look after him in surprise. By then Anakin was already out of sight, racing down corridors filled with troopers, crewmen, and droids. Their unease at the sound of the alarm sank deep into the Force, making Anakin’s control shiver for a second before he got control of himself.

He could sense the hangar in front of him and dragged himself to a stop, catching himself one-handed on a corner before he ran into the wall. Anakin was breathing hard, not so much from the run as from the extended Force use; he kept the Don’t See Me in place, though he could feel the edges of his mind start to fray from concentration. Carefully, he peered around the corner, spotting the hangar doors and the troopers standing in front of them. Even with the Don’t See Me, if he walked out into plain sight he would be fully visible to them. And then he would have to kill them.

They served the Sith. Anakin shouldn’t have hesitated on that point alone, but they were still living beings, and in their familiar armor and helmets they could easily have been a half-dozen of his own troops. Besides, if he attacked them, then the rest of the super star destroyer’s complement would be on him within seconds.

Anakin looked around quickly, the Force pointing out – aw, really? – another air vent a few meters away. He stepped over to stand directly beneath it, dropped the Don’t See Me, and launched himself upwards, knocking the grate out of the way as he scrambled into the shaft.

“This is really more your forte than mine,” he whispered to Obi-Wan as he replaced the grate, and felt Obi-Wan’s laughter curl warm and familiar through his head.

 _Hardly a specialty, I think._ After a moment, he added, his mental voice very soft, _I have missed you, Anakin._

Anakin swallowed. He loved Obi-Wan, loved him more than he would ever admit and in ways that he wouldn’t dream of vocalizing, and knew through the Force that Obi-Wan probably felt similarly. _I missed you_ from him was the equivalent of a declaration broadcast from the tallest tower on Coruscant.

“Well, I saw you this morning,” he made himself say instead. “Guess what? I beat you to the dig site. Much good that did either of us.”

_What dig site? No, don’t answer that, now isn’t the time._

“Add it to the list,” Anakin muttered. The list in question was starting to get worryingly long, as far as he was concerned. Considering that he had picked up what was probably a Sith artifact, promptly passed out in the middle of a war zone, and apparently woken up twenty years in the future with Obi-Wan having taken up residence in his head, he thought he was entitled to have a few questions.

He kept crawling, pausing at an intersection to reach out with the Force. He was relieved to find that this ventilation shaft connected with the hangar, which wasn’t always a given in starships. Direction fixed in his mind, he crawled determinedly towards his new destination, ignoring the ache that was starting to develop in his back, not to mention his knees and his remaining elbow. Humankind had not been meant to crawl through small, tight spaces for extended periods of time.

It took him almost another ten minutes, but eventually he reached a vent that looked out over the hangar. Peering down through the grille, Anakin was relieved to see that there were, as promised, several shuttles sitting on the hangar floor. The design was vaguely familiar to him from the latest Sienar Fleet specs, which he had been studying on the way from Coruscant to Odryn, but these were far more advanced.

“Are those fast?” he asked. The delta-shaped starships – the wings must fold down in flight mode – didn’t look either fast or maneuverable.

_Not remotely. But they do have hyperdrive and they’re well-armed. I believe they’re primarily used as troop transports._

“Not my favorite bird to fly.” He squirmed around until he could remove the grate, setting it aside before bracing himself for the long drop to the floor beneath him. He landed in a three-point crouch, the durasteel floor cool against his left palm.

A blaster barrel settled against the back of his neck. “Don’t move, Jedi. Put your hands up.”

“How can I put my hands up if you don’t want me to move?” Anakin asked.

“Shut up and show me your hands, traitor.”

Shifting his balance a little so that he didn’t fall over, Anakin raised his hands. At the trooper’s instruction, he put them on the back of his head and straightened up, letting his mouth compress into a frown. The shuttles were so close, the familiar vastness of space visible through the magnetic shield across from him.

Several other troopers moved carefully into position to surround him. He felt the pressure on his neck vanish as the trooper with the blaster stepped back, removing his lightsaber from his belt as he did so.

“Get the binders and contact the bridge.” It was the same man who had spoken before. Anakin turned his head to see him – a young officer maybe his own age or a few years older. He looked entirely too pleased with himself, as far as Anakin was concerned. “Tell them that we have the Jedi in custody. Should we terminate him immediately?”

“That’s really not a good idea,” Anakin said.

“Shut up,” said the officer. “You’re a rebel and a traitor. Death is the least that you deserve, like the rest of your friends.”

Anakin blinked. “You know,” he said, “this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that, but usually it’s from people who’ve known me for more than a few minutes.”

 _Anakin, you can’t permit them to take you alive!_ The alarm in Obi-Wan’s voice was unmistakable.

“Oh, stop with the dramatics!” Anakin hissed.

“What did you say?” the officer demanded.

Anakin tipped his head back, giving the man his best sneer. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said, and leapt straight up, kicking out with both legs at the two troopers on either side of him. An instant later his lightsaber thumped solidly into his palm, leaving the officer staring in astonishment at his empty palm. The blade flicked out as Anakin ignited it, tossing himself up into a backflip. His blade sliced cleanly through the belly of the man behind him; his heel snapped off the jaw of the officer, and a push of the Force flung the last troopers backwards into the side of a nearby shuttle as Anakin landed on his feet again.

He deactivated his lightsaber as he ran for the nearest shuttle, hitting the button to close the ramp behind him. It was bigger than he had expected – twenty or thirty passengers plus crew, easy – but Obi-Wan had been right, he found as he slid into the pilot’s seat. It could be flown by a single skilled pilot. He started the preflight sequence, pulling a headset on. It was already tuned to the super star destroyer’s emergency frequency, so that all he could hear were clipped exclamations of alarm and orders to detain any strangers on sight.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, settling his hands on the shuttle’s controls. It lifted easily up off the floor, its wings beginning to unfold when Anakin got it far enough up.

 _Have you noticed that your shields aren’t up?_ Obi-Wan inquired anxiously, then, _They’re going to close the blast doors!_

“Keep your shirt on, old man,” Anakin said, glancing up at the observation platform, where he saw an officer waving wildly at him. Behind him, though he couldn’t see it, he had the vague sense in the Force of the hangar bay doors opening, several squads of troopers rushing in. “Shields, shields – there we go!”

He hit the button just in time, the blaster bolts bouncing harmlessly off the shuttle. In front of him, the blast doors were starting to slide closed. “This is going to be tight!” he warned, adrenaline flushing through him as he increased the speed.

For a second he felt a hand on his shoulder, a familiar breath on his ear, as though Obi-Wan was leaning over him. Anakin didn’t look – couldn’t have even if he hadn’t been afraid Obi-Wan would vanish if he did. “Hold on!” he said needlessly, and just barely missed clipping the shuttle’s wings between the blast doors as he brought the starship screaming out into open space.

Over the headset, he could hear the super star destroyer’s bridge order TIE fighters – whatever those were – to launch. Anakin hissed a curse through his teeth; the shuttle might have been armed, but most of its guns were meant to be operated by a copilot or gunner, not the pilot.

_They’re powering up their tractor beam!_

“I know! Computer, calculate a hyperspace jump to –” He considered and discarded half a dozen planets in the space of a few seconds, then gave up and said the first system that came into his head. “Naboo.”

 _CALCULATING_ blinked across the navicomputer’s screen.

The shuttle handled like a brick, but it wasn’t the worst thing that Anakin had ever flown. He saw the swarm of gray starfighters emerge from the sides of the super star destroyer, all of them flying straight at him. He actually spared a moment to admire them, since he couldn’t remember having seen similar fighters before. They looked like nothing so much as giant eyeballs with a pair of vertical wings slapped onto either side. They seemed fast enough, but they offended Anakin’s personal sense of aesthetics.

Anakin dodged the first flurry of shots, cursing at how slow the shuttle was compared to his starfighter. Fortunately at least one gun had been designed to be fired by the pilot, rather than by the shuttle’s missing crew, and Anakin got one of the lead TIEs in his sights. The starfighter exploded in a rain of overheated metal; the pilot blinking out of the Force in a heartbeat.

 _ROUTE CALCULATED_ scrolled across the navicomputer screen.

“About time,” Anakin said, firing another burst of shots and sending the shuttle into a barrel roll to avoid the incoming missiles. He grabbed the hyperdrive lever and pulled.

And the world dissolved into stars.

*

Admiral Firmus Piett, the captain of the _Executor_ , was as rigid as a statue as he spoke. He kept his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze directed forward. His voice was even and apparently calm, and yet his fear was sunk so deeply into the Force that Sidious could taste it from halfway across the galaxy.

 _“We’ll continue to search the ship for Lord Vader, of course,”_ he concluded. _“And all our shuttles are equipped with tracking devices. When the shuttle_ Adamas _comes out of hyperspace we will be able to locate this Jedi and terminate him.”_

Piett had transmitted a copy of the security cam holos at Sidious’s order. Now he studied the hologram, which was running a loop of the Jedi’s initial arrest and escape in miniature across the surface of Sidious’s desk. He stretched a finger out and paused it, catching the Jedi in mid-air freeze frame, lithe and flexible as only the young could be, his lightsaber stretched out in one hand and his handsome face fixed in concentration. The wash of color in Sidious’s holoprojector showed that his lightsaber blade was, without question, a brilliant blue.

Even without the famous scar clearly displayed by the angle of the frozen holo, Sidious would have recognized the young Jedi. He had, after all, been the man who destroyed Anakin Skywalker more than twenty years earlier. There was no question that this was the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker rather than the Sith Lord Darth Vader; he could feel the difference in the Force, as though a sun had abruptly come blazing into existence where before there had only been darkness. It should have been impossible.

Should have been, and yet here he was, a fruit ripe for the plucking. And this time there was no need to worry about that meddling fool Kenobi getting in the way again.

“This Jedi is not to be terminated, Admiral Piett,” Sidious said. “You are to bring him to me alive and unharmed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lost warehouse of Sith artifacts on Odryn is from _Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic_ #29-30, "Exalted."


	2. Hunted by Both Sides

“I don’t understand why this isn’t working,” Luke said, tossing the lightsaber hilt down in frustration. It landed on the table with a metallic click and rolled away from him, stopping when it hit an empty caf mug.

Artoo warbled a question.

“No, Ben never explained any of this to me,” he replied. _Or anything else_ , he thought; he hadn’t meant to, but at some point in the past three years he’d started compiling a mental list of things Ben had never told him. It was currently longer than the list of things Ben had told him. “Neither did Yoda. I don’t think Yoda even carried a lightsaber.”

He peered at the flimsiplasts Ben had left behind for him, covered back and front in small, spidery handwriting that Luke had to squint to read, occasionally interspersed with diagrams. Luke had spent so much time staring at them that he was starting to see them in his dreams.

With a sigh, he retrieved the lightsaber hilt and popped it open, carefully dismantling it for what felt like the hundredth time. He spread the component parts across the table in front of him, comparing them to Ben’s list. Everything matched – it wasn’t like this was the first time he’d checked the two against each other.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the crystal,” he suggested to Artoo, picking it up gingerly. It glinted green in the room’s artificial lights, an angular synthetic crystal only a little larger than his thumbnail. “I wish I’d taken my father’s –” _No._ “– my other lightsaber apart when I had it.”

Artoo bleeped sympathetically.

Luke sighed, then put the crystal down and looked up an instant before Leia hammered a brisk knock on his door. “Come in,” he called. “It’s open.”

Leia came in and dropped into the chair next to Luke’s, looking curiously at the table full of lightsaber components. “Any luck?”

“I’m missing something, but I have no idea what it is,” he said. “Still.”

“Maybe this will cheer you up,” Leia said, sliding a miniature holoprojector across the table towards him. “Intelligence just intercepted a priority alpha transmission from Coruscant – an arrest order for a fugitive codenamed Sandman.”

Luke activated the holoprojector, which displayed a portrait of a human male about his own age, with dirty blond hair and a scar across his right eye. The Aurebesh characters scrolling across the base of the hologram were all alphanumeric codes; Luke had to rack his brain to decipher them. “Apprehend alive and unharmed, fugitive armed and dangerous, may be deranged, and – what’s this last code? Jenth-Dorn-Six-Six? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”

“That’s because it hasn’t been used in more than ten years,” Leia said, practically glowing with excitement. “It’s the Imperial code for a Jedi Knight.”

Luke’s jaw dropped. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Leia said. “It’s an older code, but they’ve never bothered to change it because it’s used so rarely nowadays. I don’t think anyone in Imperial High Command would use it by accident.”

“Because –” Luke prompted, studying the holo. He’d expected a Jedi Knight – the kind of Jedi Knight who’d rate Imperial interest – to be older, closer to Ben’s age than his own. Of course, just because he looked human didn’t mean that he actually was; there were a few near-human species that aged considerably slower than humans did. He could easily be in his fifties or sixties instead of in his twenties, or even older.

She grimaced. “Because Vader usually shows up. According to rumor, he used to be obsessed with hunting down Jedi that escaped the initial Purge.”

“I guess he succeeded,” Luke said, ignoring the pit in his stomach that had formed at the mention of Vader. _Ben, why didn’t you tell me?_ He swallowed and said, “So this guy really could be another Jedi.”

“The Emperor thinks so,” Leia said. She pointed at a High Galactic character at the end of the Imperial codes. “That’s his personal signature.”

Luke let out a low whistle. “I’ve got to find him before Vader does.”

“ _We’ve_ got to,” she corrected.

“You’re coming?” Luke said, starting to sweep the lightsaber components into the box he kept them in when he wasn’t working on the blasted thing. “But –”

Leia raised her eyebrows, and Luke shut up. As if he hadn’t spoken, she went on briskly, “He escaped from an Imperial star destroyer less than an hour ago. They’ll be tracking the shuttle he stole if he hasn’t already disabled the homing beacon.”

“Do we know the frequency?” Luke asked, reaching out to shut off the holoprojector.

“Yes, as well as the name of the ship he escaped from and its last known location. It was the _Executor_.” Leia tapped a finger on the table, her gaze dark and a little worried.

Artoo let out a series of excited bleeps, and they both glanced down at him. Luke said, “He says that that’s Darth Vader’s flagship.”

“I know,” Leia said. She hesitated for a moment. “Is that going to be a problem?”

For no reason, Luke glanced down at his prosthetic right hand; he’d stripped the glove off in order to work on the lightsaber. “No,” he said, looking back up at Leia’s concerned face. “It’s not going to be a problem. What ship are we taking?”

She straightened up, her sympathy replaced by a familiar expression of renewed determination. “Lando and Chewie volunteered. They’re prepping the _Falcon_ now. We should be ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”

“Right,” Luke said, pulling his glove back on. He had a go-bag already packed; he hauled it out from under his rack and stuffed the box of lightsaber parts and flimsiplasts into it while Leia watched with barely concealed impatience. He grabbed his blaster off a shelf and strapped the holster around his thigh, then added a box of extra power packs to his bag before fastening it shut and looping it over his shoulder. “All right, let’s go.”

Leia retrieved the holoprojector from the table and strode out into the corridor, followed by Artoo, who was making faint, worried-sounding beeps to himself that Luke couldn’t translate. Luke took a quick survey of his room to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything important, then shut off the lights and let the door lock behind him as he joined Leia and Artoo on their way to the cruiser’s starboard hangar, where the _Millennium Falcon_ was currently docked.

*

Once he had ascertained that the shuttle – its records said that it was a Lambda-class T4a from Sienar Fleet Systems called the _Adamas_ , only three years old – was in fine working order, with the fuel tanks three-quarters full, and that he would have to come out of hyperspace in about fifteen hours to refuel, Anakin sat back in the pilot’s seat and said, “Okay, Master, _now_ can we talk?”

“That seems fair.”

“ _E chu ta_!” Anakin swore, grabbing reflexively for his lightsaber as he leapt to his feet.

The man standing behind him, limned by glowing blue light, raised his empty hands. He was dressed in long white robes and a brown cloak battered by use and weather; a familiar lightsaber hung off his belt. His face was lined with age, his hair and beard white, his blue eyes tired. Anakin would have known him even after a hundred years.

“You’re _old_ ,” Anakin said, deactivating his lightsaber. “And here. You’re here? How are you here?”

Obi-Wan blurred, making Anakin shut his eyes in reflexive nausea; when he looked up again Obi-Wan looked almost exactly the same as Anakin had seen him that morning on the bridge of the _Resolute_ , a trim Jedi Knight in his mid-thirties in cream-colored robes. Except then he had been brimming with barely-concealed energy as they waited to be inserted onto Odryn; now Obi-Wan just looked tired, as though his very soul had been bruised. For some reason there were burn marks on his tunic and ash in his hair.

“You may want to sit down, Anakin,” he said gently.

“Nothing that starts with those words ever ends well,” Anakin said, but he dropped back into the pilot’s seat anyway, flinging a hand out towards the co-pilot’s chair.

Obi-Wan sat. He was still glowing slightly. “Anakin,” he said again, lingering over the name.

“You’re starting to freak me out, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said. “And that’s even without the glowing and the telepathy.”

Obi-Wan lowered his gaze. “Forgive me. I never thought that I would see you again.” For a moment his gaze went distant; the scent of sulfur and burning flesh drifted through the shuttle before vanishing. Anakin thought he felt flames lick at his skin, but the sensation was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.

He resisted the urge to reach for Obi-Wan. “You said that it had been twenty-two years.”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze dropped to his hands, folded in his lap. They were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white. “Yes,” he said. “For a long time now. A long time.”

Anakin sank back in his seat, covering his face with his left hand. He’d known that it was coming, but it still hurt to hear Obi-Wan say it. “How?” he said, glad that his voice didn’t shake. “Dooku? Grievous? Just – droids?”

It was possible. He’d been lucky – no, he was _good_ , he was one of the best Jedi in the Order – but there were days when blaster bolts had come a little too near, when an enemy lightsaber had been close enough to scorch his skin. Reflexively, he touched the place where his prosthetic arm joined the remnants of his flesh, a nervous gesture that he had fought not to develop into a tic.

He saw Obi-Wan’s gaze track the movement, the old familiar pain moving over his face. _It wasn’t your fault,_ Anakin wanted to tell him. _You were right, we should have taken him together._ He’d never said the words out loud.

“No,” Obi-Wan’s voice was dull. “Not the Confederacy. We were betrayed. The Emperor – the Supreme Chancellor, then –”

Anakin froze.

“He claimed that the Jedi had tried to stage a coup. He ordered the Order exterminated. Our own clone troopers turned on us. They marched on the Temple on Coruscant – murdered the Jedi there, all of us, even the younglings –” His voice choked on a sob; Anakin felt his grief rise in the Force and bit the side of his hand to keep from responding to it. “They were led by a Sith Lord called Darth Vader, a – a Jedi Knight who was corrupted to the Dark Side by Palpatine. He was the man who murdered you.”

“Palpatine?” Anakin whispered. “No –”

The despair in Obi-Wan’s eyes was too great for it to be anything but the truth.

“But Palpatine is my friend,” Anakin said lamely, knowing how weak the protest sounded even before he finished speaking.

“He’s a Sith Lord,” Obi-Wan said, looking up. “And the man who destroyed the Republic. It’s the Empire now. And we trusted him –” For a moment his anger sparked through the Force; it was so unfamiliar to Anakin that he jerked backwards, startled by the strength of Obi-Wan’s feelings. Under normal circumstances the idea of Obi-Wan letting his emotions get the better of him was unthinkable.

“You survived,” Anakin said, swallowing.

“I wasn’t on Coruscant,” Obi-Wan said, his gaze distant. “I was deployed on a planet called Utapau. My troopers didn’t get a clear shot at me and I was able to escape. If I had been on Coruscant…” He rested his forehead against his hand, hiding his eyes. “I might have been able to stop some of the slaughter.”

“How many –” Anakin had to stop and lick his lips, his throat dry. There had been other attacks on the Jedi, but they were distant history, thousands of years past. “How many of us died?”

Obi-Wan raised his head. Even his glow had dimmed. “Only Yoda and I survived.”

Anakin stumbled to his feet and into the shuttle’s tiny ‘fresher, falling to his knees in front of the toilet just in time to retch up everything he’d eaten that day. _Dead. All dead –_

He didn’t hear Obi-Wan’s step behind him, but he felt his master’s familiar hands on either side of his head, holding his hair back from his face. Anakin threw up again, kept vomiting until there was nothing left but bile. Obi-Wan released him as he sat back, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth.

“You saw my body,” he said. It was the only thing he could think to say, since the rest of it was just too big. _Dead. All dead. Betrayed and murdered. Even the younglings._

Obi-Wan leaned against the wall beside him, his face hidden behind one hand. “I saw what Vader left behind.”

Again, the smell of sulfur and burning flesh, a sound that might have been screaming. Anakin’s stomach heaved again, making him clap a hand to his mouth, but there was nothing left to vomit up. After a moment, the Force impressions vanished.

He pushed himself to his feet, feeling old and tired, and turned on the sink so that he could rinse out his mouth and splash some water on his face. He had to force himself to ask the next question. “Padmé?”

Obi-Wan shook his head slowly. “Dead. Murdered by Vader.”

Anakin slammed his fist into the wall. “No!”

“I was with her when she died,” Obi-Wan offered, his voice rough with remembered pain. “Her last words were of you.”

Wordless, Anakin sank back to the floor. He could feel the Force turning red with his rage, like it had on Tatooine, like it had in so many battles since then, but this time there was no one to vent his fury on. He let it run uselessly back into the Force, replaced by his grief. “You could have saved her,” he begged. “My Padmé.”

“I would have saved them all if I could,” Obi-Wan said. He added softly, “So much suffering because I was too late.”

Anakin pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. He felt sick, like the Dark Side and Obi-Wan’s rage and grief, as fresh as if the extinction of the Jedi had happened yesterday, had congealed inside him. He didn’t want to imagine it, but all he could see was his Padmé, lying dead – no, unconscious – on some volcanic planet, Obi-Wan kneeling over her with his fingers pressed to her throat, both of them frozen with some terrible pain. _Did I even get to say goodbye?_

Obi-Wan touched his shoulder, light through the layers of Anakin’s tunic and synthleather surcoat. “Take as much time as you need,” he said. “I’ll be in the cockpit.”

Anakin reached up and caught at his friend’s fingers, hanging on for an instant before letting go. Obi-Wan felt reassuringly alive, real enough to hold onto, but somehow Anakin knew that it was at least partially an illusion created by the Force. _Maybe I have gone mad_ , he thought. _Maybe this is what that Sith relic does – brings my worst nightmares to life. Maybe it’s just a bad dream._

Obi-Wan rested a hand on his head in brief benediction, then left him. Anakin didn’t hear the click of his boots on the floor or the sound of the ‘fresher door opening.

He buried his face in his hands. As much as he wanted to deny it, he could feel the truth of Obi-Wan’s words, even with the Dark Side clouding the Force like poison in fresh water. The Jedi, extinct or nearly so. Palpatine, a Sith Lord. The Republic, fallen and corrupted.

Anakin himself, mutilated and dead. Maybe in the Temple, maybe in the Senate Building or in Padmé’s apartments, maybe somewhere else. _I saw what Vader left behind._

Padmé, murdered.

_Why does everyone I love die?_ First Qui-Gon, then his mother, all the Jedi on Geonosis, all the Jedi that had been killed in this war. Even Ahsoka had left him. And now this, like a final nail in the coffin, like the old fairy tale of the Jedi Knight who had been sealed in a stasis pod and woken up to find that everyone she knew had been dead for millennia.

Anakin wanted an enemy to fight, someone to kill, something to destroy, but he was alone in space. There was no one here for him to fight. There was only Obi-Wan, and Anakin was still half-convinced that he was only a hallucination, some trick of the Force or his own mind.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, but eventually he got up, drank some more water and washed his face again. He looked at his reflection in the ‘fresher’s small mirror, the familiar scar left behind by Asajj Ventress’s lightsaber, the too-long dirty blond hair, the hollows and sharp edges of bone where the war had stolen the last vestiges of his baby fat.

“Dead man walking,” he said out loud, and shut his eyes for an instant. He and Padmé had never talked about what they would do after the war ended, but some part of Anakin had always known that he wouldn’t outlive the Clone Wars by much, if at all. He had thought that meant that he would leave the Order.

Apparently not.

But that was then and this was now, and Anakin Skywalker wasn’t dead yet.

He touched a finger to the hilt of his lightsaber to reassure himself, then took a deep breath and left the ‘fresher. He could feel the hum of the Lambda’s engines, a soft vibration through the soles of his boots, along with the faint whine of the hyperdrive. From long experience he paused to listen to both, reaching out with the Force to distinguish any abnormalities or damage to either. Satisfied, he nodded to himself and went back into the cockpit.

Obi-Wan was sitting tailor-style in the copilot’s seat, his chin propped on his fist as he stared out the viewport at the streaking lines of stars. He’d shifted again, Anakin saw; instead of the burn-marked tunic he had been wearing before, he was in clean robes, the streaks of ash gone from his skin and hair. At Anakin’s arrival he raised his head, regarding him silently.

Anakin dropped into the pilot’s seat and took a deep breath. “How long have you been dead?”

The corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth lifted a little in approval or amusement, Anakin couldn’t tell which. “About three years,” he said. “Well done, my old friend.”

It hurt, obscurely. Anakin didn’t know why he had thought that it wouldn’t. “This Darth Vader?” he asked, rubbing at his forehead.

Obi-Wan inclined his head slightly. “Yes.”

Anakin shut his eyes. “Would it just be easier to ask who isn’t dead?” he said at last, looking up.

“That you know?” Obi-Wan said. “Yoda. Mon Mothma of Chandrila. The Emperor Palpatine, Dark Lord of the Sith.”

Anakin waited for him to go on, then realized that Obi-Wan had finished. He felt himself bend over slightly, as if he had been punched in the gut. “That’s it? That’s everyone? No other Jedi? None of Padmé’s friends in the Senate? What about my mother’s – what about the Lars family, on Tatooine?”

“Those Jedi that survived the initial purge were hunted down and killed,” Obi-Wan said. His voice had gone a little distant. “Most of Senator Amidala’s friends died in the years that followed – Loyalist senators who attempted to fight the Empire from the inside. Beru and Owen Lars were murdered by Imperial stormtroopers several years ago. Bail Organa died when the planet of Alderaan was destroyed shortly before my death.”

“The – _planet_?” Anakin said, too stunned to comprehend the scale. “A biotoxin, or –”

“A weapon. A massive space station called the Death Star.” Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair, his gaze flicking sideways. “It was destroyed not long afterwards.”

“Good,” Anakin said, clenching his fist. Trying for lightness, he added, “I don’t like this new galaxy you got here.”

“Neither do I,” Obi-Wan said. “Neither do I.” He tipped his chin back against his fist, his gaze fixed on Anakin. “What will you do, now that you’re here?”

“Find a way home,” Anakin said. “Try and stop all this. I can’t let this happen, Master. Maybe that’s why the Force brought me here. I haven’t been fighting a war for the past three years just so the Sith can destroy everyone and everything I love. But while I’m here, I might as well show those Sith Lords of yours that there’s still one Jedi Knight alive and kicking in the galaxy.”

Obi-Wan stared at him, faint surprise twisting through the Force, and then a slow smile spread over his face. “Anakin, I have missed you,” he said. “And I believe that they’ve already gotten that message.”

*

“Yeah, Chewie, I know it could be a trap,” Luke said. “But we don’t have a choice. We have to take the chance.”

Across the table from him in the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s lounge, Chewbacca let out a low moan of protest.

“I know, I know,” Luke said. “But if there’s really another Jedi Knight out there, then we have to find him before the Empire does. There’s no telling what will happen to him if they get to him first.”

“Probably murdered like all the rest,” Lando said, sliding into the seat next to Chewie.

Luke gave him a wary look. He liked Lando fine, but he wasn’t sure that he trusted him yet – not after what had happened on Bespin, even if Chewie and Leia had forgiven him that. Han had trusted Lando, and look where that had gotten him.

When Luke didn’t say anything, Lando tapped his fingers on the table and said in tones of reminiscence, “I remember when the order first went out, back when I was a kid. The HoloNet was reporting that General Kenobi – you’re probably too young to know who he was – had just killed Grievous on Utapau and the Clone Wars were over and then it just went dead. The entire HoloNet, at least the general access parts.” He exchanged a look with Chewbacca, who growled softly. “Never happened before, never happened again. When it came back online, they were reporting all that drek about the Jedi trying to take over the Republic and the formation of the Empire and all that. I always thought it was pretty crummy that old Palpatine waited until the Jedi had won the war for him to start screaming attempted coup.”

“General Kenobi – do you mean Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Luke asked. At Lando’s nod, he said, “I knew him, actually. He, uh, retired not far from where I grew up.”

Lando let out a low whistle. “No kidding? Well, if any Jedi was going to survive the Purge, I’d have put my creds on him. He and that partner of his were the best of the best. I wonder what happened to Skywalker?” he added, apparently as an afterthought.

“He died,” Luke said, startling himself.

Lando blinked mild eyes at him. “Relative of yours?”

“My father,” Luke said. “Actually.” Suddenly he’d lost his taste for the conversation. He stood, stretching, and said, “I’m going to go catch some rack time before we come out of hyperspace.”

As he left, he heard Lando ask Chewie, “Was it something I said?”

Chewie responded with a rattling sigh that seemed to shake the whole ship.

On his way to the portside crew quarters, Luke detoured into the cockpit, where Leia was sitting in the pilot’s seat with one leg curled up beneath her and her cheek resting against her fist. R2-D2 was tucked off to one side, mostly shut down for the moment, though he blinked his lights at Luke in greeting. Stars streamed by in the viewport.

Leia looked up as Luke came in. “Hey.”

“Hey.” He dropped into the copilot’s seat. “You all right?”

“People keep asking me that,” Leia said, sounding irritated. “I feel like I should be asking you that.”

Luke held up his gloved right hand. “Good as new. Better; it doesn’t cramp.”

Leia smiled a little, like he’d meant her to, then dropped her chin back against her fist.

They watched the stars for a while in silence, then Luke said, “Chewie thinks it’s a trap.”

Leia shrugged. “He might not be wrong. Every Imperial ship in the quadrant is probably tracking that shuttle, and all of them have heard about us. At least a few of them have to be banking on the fact that even if the Sandman doesn’t show up, we certainly will. They know that the Alliance will send someone to investigate reports of a Jedi Knight.”

“The Sand – oh.” Luke had been thinking of their target only as “the Jedi”; he’d forgotten that the Empire had tagged him with a codename. “You certainly know how to cheer a guy up.”

She gave him the thin edge of a smile. “I try. My father –”

Something on the console began to beep urgently. Luke and Leia both swung around towards it, but it was Leia who poked at it with long one finger and said, “We’ve lost the homing beacon. It must have been disabled. Get Chewie and Lando in here, will you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Luke said, tossing off a salute to make her smile again.

Within a few minutes, all four of them, along with Artoo and Threepio, were gathered around the Falcon’s star charts of the quadrant. They knew the general direction that the anonymous Jedi Knight had been headed in when he had fled the _Executor_ ; given the _Falcon_ ’s greater speed, they would have been able to track him to whatever system he stopped in to refuel within a few minutes of his arrival in realspace. The Lambda-class T4a shuttle he had apparently stolen had to come out of hyperspace fairly often because it couldn’t carry enough fuel to make long jumps, which limited the number of inhabited systems he could end up in to about two dozen.

“These two have Imperial bases on them,” Leia said finally, banishing the systems in question with a flick of her wrist. “And that one’s in open rebellion; there’s an Imperial blockade around the planet.”

Chewie growled a question. Leia went on slowly, “Well, some of them have Alliance sympathies, but I’m not sure –”

“Some of these are in Hutt Space,” Lando observed. “They’re not too fond of Imperials, even if they’re nominally part of the Empire. Good place for one guy to get lost, if he wanted to sell the Lambda to a chop shop – or Florrum or Vanqor, those are both run by pirate gangs.”

Certainty sparked in Luke’s mind, as clearly as though someone – _Ben_? he wondered, surprised – had leaned over his shoulder and whispered in his ear. He pointed at the star chart. “That one. Florrum.”

Leia touched the holoprojector’s controls, so that the star chart vanished, replaced by the Florrum system. Chewie made a dubious noise.

“Yeah, I know how it sounds,” Luke said, both to him and to Lando’s disbelieving expression. “But I’m sure. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

“Florrum would make sense,” Lando said eventually. “Maybe a couple of dozen settlements on the whole planet – a few herders, but no real natural resources, nothing the Empire is interested in. Mostly pirates and their families; Hondo Ohnaka’s gang used to have their clearinghouse there, but I haven’t heard anything about him for years.”

Leia looked at Luke. “You’re sure?”

He nodded. “I’m sure.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then returned his nod. “Chewie, set a course for Florrum. Let’s beat the Empire there.”

*

Fifteen hours after they had fled the super star destroyer, the _Adamas_ came out of hyperspace in the Florrum system.

“Think Hondo’s people are still here?” Anakin asked, leaning over the console to peer out the viewport at the brownish-gray planet in front of them. He pulled a headset on and kept one eye on the comm board in case they were hailed by planetary authority, even though he didn’t really expect it. The last time he had been here, Florrum hadn’t had any kind of organized government; Anakin didn’t think twenty years was going to change that. The shuttle’s records on the planet claimed that it had a minimal Imperial presence, which had surprised Anakin, since previously it had been one of thousands of worlds that operated on the very fringes of the Republic, not quite fully independent but without any representation or legal standing in the Senate.

“I’ve no idea,” Obi-Wan said, making no move to look for himself. “If he is, I advise that you prevail on our former relationship to trade ships, since this one is identifiable as Imperial to every civilized being in the galaxy.”

“I don’t know if a couple years of mutual hostility really count as a relationship,” Anakin said. “I’m particularly fond of that time he strung us up and electrocuted us.”

“You may have a point,” Obi-Wan said. “Besides, he always liked me more than you.”

“Yeah, just keep telling yourself that,” Anakin said. He could feel the ship trembling very slightly around him as it entered atmosphere and glanced at the console to make sure that everything was in order. He’d had to dig around in the Lambda’s systems to find the homing beacon and while he thought that he had put everything else back where he’d found it, it was always possible that something had gotten mixed up.

“I think it’s probably smarter to stick to the smaller settlements,” he said, looking at the sensor boards. “They’re less likely to have any Imperials there.”

He’d seen his own arrest order come over the general fleet frequency not an hour after they’d fled the _Executor_ , so he felt comfortable making the assumption that he was a wanted man. It wasn’t the first time; even before the war, Jedi hadn’t always been popular on the planets they visited, and ever since Geonosis there had been a standing bounty on Jedi, paid for by the Confederacy.

“That is undoubtedly true,” Obi-Wan said absently. “On fringe worlds like Tatooine and Florrum, stormtroopers don’t venture out of the major urban areas unless they have a reason too.”

Anakin swung around to look at him. “Tatooine?”

Obi-Wan developed a sudden interest in the sensor boards. “This settlement seems likely,” he said, tapping a faintly glowing finger against the screen. “It’s not near any of the larger cities, but it has a small spaceport and a fueling station.”

Anakin programmed the coordinates into the sublight navicomputer. “Tatooine?” he repeated. “What were you doing on Tatooine?”

Obi-Wan paused. Anakin hadn’t thought to ask him what he had been doing during the nineteen years between the near-extinction of the Jedi and his death and Obi-Wan hadn’t volunteered the information. He had assumed – he hadn’t assumed anything, actually. He hadn’t really been able to think past the raw grief that had followed Obi-Wan’s revelation about Padmé’s murder and the death of the Jedi.

At last, Obi-Wan said, “I was living there.”

“ _Willingly_?” Anakin couldn’t hide the disgust in his voice. “Why would you want to live _there_?” _Why would_ anyone _want to live there_? he thought, but he didn’t voice the question.

Obi-Wan angled a frown towards him. “I had my reasons,” he said, and from his expression, that was the end of it.

Anakin frowned back at him, but he knew not to press the matter further. He took the _Adamas_ high over the settlement just to get a look at it from the air, hoping that that wouldn’t be taken as a hostile action, then brought the shuttle down in the shelter of a canyon about two klicks from the settlement. Obi-Wan nodded his approval as the Lambda settled amidst a cloud of dust, its wings folding upwards into a triangle.

“No sense getting ourselves on the spaceport’s docking registry if we can avoid it,” he said.

“Or paying the docking fees,” Anakin said, shutting down the ship’s systems. “I’ll have a look around, then bring the _Adamas_ in later to refuel after dark.” He glanced down at himself as he flipped the last switch. “I should buy a set of clothes that doesn’t scream _Jedi_ to everyone that’s ever seen a holovid.”

“Most of the vids with Jedi in them were recalled years ago,” Obi-Wan said. “You probably don’t have anything to worry about on that count.” He stroked a hand over his beard, his gaze absent. “But that’s probably a wise decision. Some of the older Imperial officers served the Republic and still remember the Jedi. No one sympathetic to us, of course. They were all killed soon after the Republic fell.”

“Every time I think it can’t get any worse, you open your mouth and it gets worse,” Anakin sighed. He sat back in his seat, staring out the viewport. Not far away from where the ship had landed, a herd of native skalders scattered; a few seconds later a geyser spat sulfuric acid thirty feet into the air.

Obi-Wan followed his gaze. “Charming vacation spot,” he observed.

“I guess it would look that way to someone who willingly chose to live on Tatooine,” Anakin said dryly. When he glanced over at Obi-Wan, he saw that his friend had lost some of his clarity; the back of his chair was just barely visible through his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Hmm? Oh.” Obi-Wan flexed his faintly translucent fingers, looking through his palm with a curious expression on his face. “I’m fine. I’ve never held physical form this long before.”

Anakin swallowed. “Are you going to…you know, are you going to go away?”

He didn’t think he could stand the idea of losing Obi-Wan too. Glow or not, it was hard to think of Obi-Wan as actually being dead. Anakin could see him, hear him, even touch him – he’d spent several minutes poking and prodding Obi-Wan until Obi-Wan had slapped his hand away in familiar irritation. If he left –

Obi-Wan gave him an unreadable look. “Someday,” he said, sounding tired, “my part in this will be ended and I will return to the Living Force. I don’t think that it will be anytime soon, though.”

Anakin shut his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Anakin looked up and leaned forward to touch Obi-Wan’s knees, ignoring the way that it made his fingertips buzz slightly. “I’m sorry that I died and left you alone with all this, Master. I don’t think either of us was really meant to be alone.”

This time it was Obi-Wan who shut his eyes. A flash of his pain echoed through the Force again, with the now-familiar shimmers of fire, burning flesh, and the brilliant glow of two blue lightsabers. At last he said, “We are but instruments of the Force, my old friend. It sets us aside when our work is done and returns to us when we are needed again.”

How many times had he told himself that over the past nineteen years? Obi-Wan had complete faith in the Force, more so than any other Jedi Anakin had ever met. If he ever lost that faith, it would destroy him.

Maybe it had. Anakin was far from the best student the Temple had ever had, but he had never heard of a Jedi Knight remaining after death this way. He wondered, suddenly and for the first time since he had woken up a little more than fifteen hours ago, if Obi-Wan had gone a little mad over the years.

Obi-Wan regarded him silently, but Anakin thought he saw flames reflected in his familiar blue eyes. _Who burned?_ he wanted to ask. _Who did you watch die in the fire?_

Instead he stood up, stretching until he heard his back pop, and went to find the bag that he’d cobbled together from the shuttle’s emergency kit. There wasn’t much he could do to avoid looking like a Jedi, since there hadn’t been any spare clothes aboard the shuttle; the best Anakin could do was add one of the shuttle’s spare blasters to his utility belt. Florrum was a lot like Tatooine; walking around without a visible weapon, especially as an obvious offworlder, was just asking for trouble. Anakin wasn’t planning to leave his lightsaber behind, but from everything Obi-Wan had said, he suspected no one would recognize it as a weapon instead of some sort of tool.

At least he wasn’t wearing his armor. That definitely would have raised eyebrows, since it was emblazoned with the Jedi symbol.

Anakin slung the bag over his shoulder. It contained a bottle of water and some of the shuttle’s rations, which had turned out to be the same protein bars the Republic used. More importantly, Anakin had found the shuttle’s emergency fund, a box of hard credits that would cover the cost of refueling or minor repairs. All he had had on him were Republic credits and barely enough of those to cover dinner, as well as a chip linked to one of the Jedi Temple’s slush accounts. It was possible that the account still existed, but Anakin felt better knowing that he didn’t have to find that out the hard way.

He looked back at Obi-Wan, who was still sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. “Are you coming?”

Obi-Wan waved a transparent hand, his sleeve flapping. “You don’t need me for this.”

“Maybe I like having you watch my back, Master,” Anakin said, reluctant to leave him behind. Ghost or not, Obi-Wan was the only link he had to what Anakin couldn’t help thinking of as the real world. And he had never been good at walking away from his Master.

Obi-Wan’s expression softened a little. “I don’t know how much help I can be, but if you call for me, I’ll come.”

It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Anakin grinned comfortably at him, saw Obi-Wan smile back. “Don’t let anyone steal the shuttle,” he said, and made his way towards the door so that he didn’t have to watch Obi-Wan fade away behind him.

*

Lando had looked dubious when Luke had indicated one of the smaller settlements instead of Florrum’s planetary capital, but he and Chewie brought the _Millennium Falcon_ down in the settlement’s spaceport without protest, transmitting one of their faked ID tags when indicated by spaceport security. Once they had landed and paid the docking fee, Leia took charge. She was dressed for the excursion in a plain dark shirt and pants, a blaster belt slung low on her hips with a holster strapped around her thigh, and her hair braided in a crown around her head.

“Chewie, you and Lando stay with the _Falcon_ ,” she said. “We might need to make a quick getaway; there’s not supposed to be any Imperial presence in this part of the planet, but I saw stormtroopers in the city when we were coming in. They might have had another way of tracking the stolen shuttle.”

“Or it might be Vader,” Luke said quietly. He had been trying to feel his way along his unpredictable connection to the Force, hoping that he could find the missing Jedi Knight. He thought that he could sense him; there was what he could only describe as a warm spot in the Force, like the stones in the Jundland Waste that retained their heat for a few hours after the suns had gone down, baffling the lifeforms sensors in the moisture farm’s security system. Except for Ben and Yoda, who were rules unto themselves, Luke had never felt a Jedi in the Force before. He had no idea what to look for. “I think that he might be able to find a Jedi Knight if he knew where to start looking.”

Chewbacca said something rude. Sheepishly, Luke added, “Yeah, but I’m not exactly a real Jedi. I think this guy might be.”

“Well, he’s certainly got our friends in white running around like gizgas with their heads cut off,” Lando said.

Chewie growled something that Threepio automatically started to translate before Leia waved her hand and he stopped mid-word.

“As far as we’ve been able to discern, our new friend doesn’t have any prior relationship with the Alliance,” Leia went on. “We don’t want to spook him, so I think it’s best if Luke and I are the ones to make contact.” She paused for a moment, evidently waiting for someone to argue with her. When no one spoke up, she nodded once and said, “Keep your comlinks on. I meant it about the quick getaway.”

The spaceport was nearly deserted except for a couple of small freighters. Luke and Leia circled through it once just in case, but it would have taken an act of supreme idiocy for someone to land a stolen Imperial vessel here. It was more likely that the Jedi had landed somewhere outside the settlement and walked in to try and trade his ship for something less conspicuous.

They were on their way out of the spaceport when Luke realized they were being followed.

He turned around and regarded R2-D2 with a frown. Leia went on another few steps before noticing that he wasn’t with her before turning around too, her eyebrows arching up when she recognized Artoo. He let out a series of urgent beeps.

Luke and Leia glanced at each other. By now they had learned that arguing with Artoo when he had his mind made up was pointless; he was the most stubborn and opinionated droid Luke had ever met.

“Okay,” Luke said. “I guess it can’t hurt. You remember what he looks like?” He had shown the hologram to Artoo earlier, which had had the unexpected result of shutting the astromech up for a few minutes.

Artoo made a noise of assent and rolled past him to catch up with Leia. Luke didn’t bother to hide his smile as he followed.

They had been walking for about twenty minutes, working their way through the narrow streets and avoiding the squads of stormtroopers searching the settlement, when Leia turned to Luke. The struggle was clear on her face for a few moments before she spoke. “Do you – can you sense anything?”

“I’ve been trying since we entered the system,” Luke admitted. “I think he’s here – I’m sure he’s here – but I’m not actually very good at this.”

Leia arched one eyebrow. “You’re the best I’ve ever met.”

“Somehow I don’t think you’ve had a very wide survey of Jedi,” Luke said. He put his head to one side, shutting his eyes as he groped his way through the Force. It was becoming rapidly clear to him that while Yoda had certainly been teaching him how to use the Force, he had been doing so with a very specific goal in mind, which meant that Luke was missing a lot. “He’s here – he’s hiding himself. Not from me specifically, just in general. He’s _strong_ ,” he added, wincing; for a second he thought that he’d felt the Jedi’s attention turned towards him, but the impression he’d had vanished almost instantly. “I think he’s a real Jedi, like Ben.”

Leia frowned. “He should be dead,” she said, though it was without rancor.

Luke didn’t reply. Eventually, he said, “I think we should go left.”

To her credit – Luke knew how uncomfortable she was with this sort of thing – Leia didn’t argue. She just shrugged a little and said, “I don’t have any better ideas.”

They went left. It was coming on to dusk now, but the main street that they stepped out into was well-illuminated. Luke shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to follow that odd, thin thread of the Force. He was positive that the unknown Jedi Knight was here somewhere, but Luke wasn’t really sure how to deal with that awareness.

Ben probably knew, but Luke hadn’t seen Ben since he had left Dagobah, although he thought that once or twice he had sensed Ben’s presence in his quarters or on the X-wing hangar deck of the _Independence_. He thought that Ben felt a little ashamed about his lie, but it was entirely possible that Luke was projecting and Ben thought no such thing. It was hard to tell when he never showed up anymore.

Leia was walking with one hand resting on her blaster grip, her gaze flicking back and forth across the crowd. Humans were definitely in the minority on this world, though there were plenty of Weequay and Nikto around, and enough other humans that they didn’t stand out. She had pulled up the hood on her jacket when they passed the first stormtrooper squad and her face was shadowed in the gloom.

Luke’s comlink beeped. He took it out of his pocket and said, “Hey, Lando, any trouble?”

_“Not unless you count the squad of stormtroopers parked in the next bay over,”_ Lando said, sounding grumpy. _“They showed up right after you left. I think they’re staking out the spaceport in case your boy comes through here.”_

Leia had stopped to listen. “Did they recognize the _Falcon_?”

_“Don’t think so. I’m not happy, though.”_ There was a low growl. _“Chewie’s not happy either.”_

_“Specifically, Chewbacca believes that this is a trap,”_ C-3PO said primly. _“He says –”_

“Yeah, Threepio, I know what he says,” Luke said quickly. Chewie had made that very clear numerous times on the way to Florrum. Luke still wasn’t sure he was wrong, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it again.

_“You two having any luck?”_ Lando asked. _“I can’t say I’m too comfortable with our new neighbors here.”_

“Not yet,” Leia said. “Luke has a hunch. We’re on our way to –”

Blasterfire shattered the peace of the night. Artoo let out a burst of frantic beeping and rolled forward in the direction it had come from; Luke said quickly, “We’ll call you back,” and stuffed the comlink in his pocket before taking off at a run in the direction of the shooting.

*

_Sith-blasted sons of –_

Anakin leapt over a vendor’s hovercart, landing in a roll and bouncing back to his feet without slowing. He turned long enough to shove at the hovercart with the Force, sending it flying back into the troopers following him, then kept running, dodging around clumps of civilians who scattered when they saw the stormtroopers behind him. He needed to get off the main streets as soon as he could, away from civilians who could get hurt in the pursuit.

“Stop that man in the name of the Emperor!” came a shout from behind him.

To Anakin’s relief, no one in his way actually seemed inclined to obey. If anything, they drew back from the center of the street, except for a young bantha that wandered out in front of him, lowing desolately. Anakin vaulted over it, sending a quick mental suggestion that it ought to charge the troopers. He heard a bellow from behind him as he kept running, but he didn’t stop to check if it was the bantha or one of the troopers.

A second eight-man squad of troopers appeared at the opposite end of the street, pointing at him and shouting more orders to stop, to put his weapons down, same old, same old.

_“E chu ta!”_ Anakin swore, breathless, and veered left into a narrow alleyway. A push with the Force sent an overfull garbage bin flying to block the entrance, to the curses of the stormtroopers behind him, and Anakin kept running.

He came to an abrupt halt when the alley suddenly terminated in a dead end. Anakin swore again, glancing up to gauge the height of the buildings on either side of him. He didn’t know what was waiting for him on the roof, but he definitely knew what was coming down the alley towards him. Bending his knees, he braced himself to swarm up the walls – he couldn’t quite take them in one leap – then the Force whispered a warning and he dodged sideways, a blaster bolt hissing close enough to singe his sleeve.

“Stop, rebel!”

Anakin’s lightsaber hilt slapped into his palm, the blade flaring into existence as he deflected a flurry of bolts back at the stormtroopers who had followed him. They were shooting stun bolts, which at least meant that Anakin wasn’t having any pangs of conscience about sending them back at sentient beings. With the armor, though, it took three or four stun bolts to bring each trooper down, which was frustrating enough that Anakin found himself wishing that they were shooting to kill. It would be more convenient.

He could sense the approach of another squadron as the last trooper slumped backwards, reeling from the reflected stunner. Deactivating his lightsaber, Anakin launched himself at the nearest wall, the Force guiding him as he swarmed up it, bouncing lightly between miniscule toe- and fingerholds. To the unknowing eye, it looked like he was running up a smooth wall.

“There he goes!”

Anakin dodged sideways to avoid a blaster bolt and nearly fell, catching himself with the Force at the last minute. He hauled himself over the edge of the roof and landed lightly on his feet, his lightsaber still clenched in his fist. The blade snapped out even before Anakin’s mind had caught up with his instincts, deflecting a blaster bolt back into the trooper that had fired at him. His armor absorbed the stun bolt effortlessly.

Seven other troopers, the other members of his squad, were spread out between this rooftop and the next. The four nearest Anakin approached slowly, their blasters fixed on him.

“Put down your weapon and come peacefully,” the one who had shot at him said, his voice muffled by his helmet.

“Make me,” Anakin snapped, raising his lightsaber in a ready position. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, gauging the distance between this building and the next. He could make that jump easily – but he was uncomfortably aware of the shooters on the other roof, and how vulnerable he’d be during the few seconds he was in the air.

Now he really wished he had Obi-Wan here to watch his back.

“Take him!” barked a trooper with a squad leader’s yellow markings on his armor.

Anakin felt his lips skim back from his teeth in a snarl of frustration, shifting his stance to account for the shooters behind him as the troopers opened fire. His lightsaber flicked sideways, moving so quickly it was little more than a blur even to Anakin’s Force-aided vision as it deflected the bolts. Anakin threw himself forward, tucking himself into a ball and coming up on one knee to cut a trooper down, bouncing back to his feet for the killing stroke and deflecting a bolt back at its shooter in the same motion.

He didn’t see the stun bolt that hit him.

It was only a glancing blow, but it was enough to knock him out for a few seconds. Anakin opened his eyes to find himself staring up at the darkening sky and down the barrel of a blaster rifle. Cursing mentally, he grabbed for the Force with one hand and his lightsaber with the other, but before he could do anything more, a shot rang out.

The stormtrooper standing over him fell slowly backwards. Anakin scrambled to his feet, his lightsaber in hand now, and looked into the fearless brown eyes of a human woman about his own age. She lowered her blaster when she saw him.

“I’m Leia Organa,” she said. “I’m here to rescue you.”


	3. Flight from the Empire

The Jedi Knight was on his feet again so quickly that Leia didn’t seen him move, gripping his lightsaber in his gloved hand. He frowned at her, apparently unconvinced by her words.

“I’m with the Rebel Alliance,” she tried again. “We’re here to help you.”

“Leia, we’re about to have company!” Luke yelled. He was on the opposite roof, peering down into the street, and Leia only spared a quick glance in his direction before turning her attention back to the Jedi.

“Organa?” he said suspiciously. “As in Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan?”

“He’s my father,” Leia said, relief at the recognition crystallizing in her veins. Her father had had a lot of contacts spread out through the galaxy, of whom Leia only knew a few; the identities of the rest had vanished along with Alderaan. “We have a ship that the Empire can’t track; we can take you to a safe port if you don’t want to come back to the Fleet with us.”

He hesitated, his indecision clear on his handsome face, and – Leia _swore_ she hadn’t blinked – between one heartbeat and the next there was a human man standing beside him, dressed in a cream-colored version of the Jedi’s outfit. He was older than the other Jedi, maybe Han’s age, with gingery hair and beard and bright blue eyes. “Anakin, it’s all right, go with them,” he said.

It was his voice, rich and confident, that Leia recognized. Something went _click_ in her mind. She had seen him before in one of her father’s rare pre-Empire holofiles. “General Kenobi?” she said blankly. “But you’re –”

“Leia!” Luke barked. He fired down into the street below, to the sound of shouts and a burst of returning blasterfire that made Luke drop. For a moment Leia felt her heart stop in anguished alarm, then Luke scrambled back to his feet and fired back.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” said the Jedi – Anakin, apparently – as he clipped his lightsaber to his belt. His gaze flickered sideways to the empty space where the other Jedi had been standing, then snapped back to her. He swept a hand out towards her politely. “Ladies first, your hi – it is your highness?”

“Just Leia’s fine.” She holstered her blaster as they ran towards the ladder on the opposite side of the roof, which let down into a narrow alley currently occupied by R2-D2 and two stunned stormtroopers. Leia scrambled down it as quickly as she could, almost falling off the last rung, and looked up to make sure that Anakin was following her.

Instead of bothering with the ladder, he stepped off the side of the roof, landing in a soft crouch on the packed dirt beside Leia before straightening up. R2-D2 rolled directly at him, hitting him hard enough to make him stagger back.

“Artoo?” he said in astonishment, his eyes widening; the astromech warbled a response and hit him again, though with less force this time. “How – what –”

Luke appeared behind him, still holding his blaster in one hand. “We’ve got at least two minutes before they’re on us; they can’t get to this alley from the main street, so they have to go around, but I think there’s another way in a couple streets over.”

Leia took out her comlink as they started to move quickly in the direction they had come from. “Chewie, prep the _Falcon_. We’ve picked up the package and we want to be home in time for dinner.”

“I hope you don’t mean that literally,” said the Jedi, his voice deceptively light. “Cannibalism is an important cultural tradition on many worlds, but it always gives me the creeps.”

He said “important cultural tradition” like it was a phrase he’d learned in school. Leia realized abruptly that she didn’t know anything about how Jedi had been trained, if they had studied at an academy like imperial recruits did or if they learned one on one or in small groups, like the craft guilds on Alderaan. It had never been important before. All the Jedi were dead.

Chewie growled a question.

“The package,” Leia replied, making an apologetic gesture at the Jedi. He shrugged, clever enough to recognize code when he heard it. “I’ll introduce you later.”

He made a sound of agreement in Shyriiwook and signed off. Leia slipped the comlink back into her pocket, feeling her nerves jumping.

The settlement was a tight cluster of tall mud-brick buildings interconnected by narrow back alleys, wider main streets, and dozens of dead ends and blind turns. It would take the stormtroopers hours to search; Leia was just hoping that they wouldn’t get lost on their way back to the spaceport. She and Luke had been counting on R2-D2 to map the way, but given how long they had been wandering around the settlement before they had found the Jedi, she wasn’t sure that they would be able to find the most direct way back.

Speaking of –

She glanced back over her shoulder at the Jedi, who had a slightly distracted air to him, as if he was doing two things at once. He looked back at her with mild inquisitiveness, his sandy eyebrows arching.

“What do I call you?” Leia asked. “I don’t want to have to yell ‘Master Jedi’ if we get separated.”

“Anakin –” His gaze slid sideways, just for a second, as if he had heard something that Leia couldn’t. “– ah, Amidala.”

_Probably not his real name_ , Leia thought, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise. He might have known her father, but that didn’t mean he had to trust them, especially considering how highly prized Jedi were by the Empire. “I’m Leia and that’s Luke,” she said. “And the droid is –”

“R2-D2,” he finished for her. His expression softened as the astromech chirped a response. “We’ve met.”

He must have known Captain Raymus Antilles, who had owned Artoo before they had escaped the capture of the _Tantive IV_ and turned up on the Death Star with Luke. Leia was beginning to form a vague, hazy picture of what the Jedi’s relationship with Alderaan and the Alliance might have been. He had clearly known Bail Organa personally when Leia’s father had still been an Imperial Senator – when there _had_ been an Imperial Senate, of course, which was now some three years gone.

Anakin saw her looking at him and asked, “How many men did you bring with you?”

“Besides us? Just the pilot and copilot, and our protocol droid,” Luke said. He sounded a little apologetic about it, but Anakin just nodded.

They turned down an alley that was even narrower than the one they had just left. It was full dark now, and the tall walls of the buildings on either side of them seemed to close in above them, cutting off what little moon- and star- light there was. Behind them, R2-D2 activated his beacon, illuminating the space about five feet in front of them.

“Thanks, Artoo,” Luke said.

Leia’s skin itched at how exposed the light made them, at how narrow the alley was – if stormtroopers showed up, they would be trapped without anywhere to run. But she couldn’t hear them approaching, so for the moment they were probably fine. She hoped.

Somewhere nearby, she heard the telltale roar of an Imperial gunship. All three of them looked up, Leia and Luke reaching for their blasters and the Jedi for his lightsaber, but after a moment the sound moved off; its searchlights hadn’t touched the alley. Leia could hear a second gunship on the opposite side of the settlement.

“They must really want you,” Luke said to Anakin.

“Yeah, I guess they’re not really happy with me,” Anakin said casually. “I thought I’d pulled the homing beacon on the _Adamas_ but they must have had a lock on by the time they found it.”

“Or built in redundancies,” Luke offered.

“I hope not,” Leia said uneasily, thinking of the Alliance’s small collection of captured Imperial vessels. None of them had brought the Imperials down on them yet, but they were usually kept separate from the main part of the Fleet. The Imperials might just be waiting for an opportunity to strike at the Alliance flagship and High Command.

Up above them, the gunship circled back. All three of them looked up again, but it remained out of sight.

“Spiral search pattern,” Anakin said. “Two moving in opposing spirals across the settlement. We use – we used to use it in the war to clear urban areas.”

Leia raised her eyebrows at the slip, but this wasn’t the time to question him. The mention of the Clone Wars – _the war_ to anyone from her father’s generation – suggested that he was older than he looked, the only remaining survivor of the Jedi Purge. “We’d better hurry before they decide to close the spaceport,” she said, quickening her pace. “I don’t think we’re far now.”

“We’d better not be,” Luke said. “Because if we’re not, I’m pretty sure that we’ve started going in circles.”

Artoo beeped.

“He says we’re going in the right direction,” Anakin said. “We’re maybe – ”

Leia didn’t see him move, but an instant later his lightsaber was in his fist, gleaming blue blade ignited as he shoved Leia behind him with his free hand.

A door slid open directly in front of them, spilling out two Weequay children and a teenage Nikto girl. The two children came skidding to a stop when they saw Anakin, the girl grabbing for them. All three of them stared at him with various expressions of startlement.

Anakin deactivated his lightsaber with a hiss. “Get back inside and lock the door behind you,” he said. “Don’t open it until your parents come back.”

The Nikto girl nodded, pulling the children back into the building. The door slid shut behind her, followed by the sound of the lock engaging. Anakin hung his lightsaber back on his belt.

“We’d better keep moving,” Leia said, pushing past him. “Those gunships show that the Imperials aren’t exactly trying to keep a low profile.”

“When do they ever?” Luke said dryly.

They broke into a loping run, Artoo rolling along behind them. Twice Leia heard stormtroopers behind one of the thin dividing walls separating this alley from another, like the dead end that had stopped Anakin before, but each time they moved on.

At last they emerged from the alley into a side street that led to the plaza in front of the spaceport. R2-D2 turned off his beacon, since the street was illuminated by a handful of chipped and flickering glowlights spaced at irregular intervals along the buildings that lined it. Leia waved the others to a halt, pulling her comlink out.

“It’s me,” she said when Lando answered. “We’re nearly there.”

She could hear the nerves in his voice as he replied, _“We’re engines hot and ready to blow this joint, Princess.”_

“Good,” Leia said, clicking the comlink off. She lowered her blaster so that it was pressed against her leg, where it would hopefully go unnoticed by a casual observer, and stepped out into the street, wary of exposure after so long in the narrow alleys. The others followed, R2-D2 rolling silently along behind them.

To one side of the street stretched the long pale bulk of the spaceport’s southern wall. Leia eyed it as they passed, wishing that there was a back door they could sneak in through, but the only way into the spaceport was through the front entrance in the plaza.

“What are you doing?” she heard Luke say behind her.

Leia turned around. Anakin had stopped, resting his ungloved left hand against the wall. “Working out how thick it is,” he said. “And if there’s anyone on the other side.”

Leia and Luke stared at him, not understanding what he was getting at, then Anakin pulled his lightsaber off his belt and said, “This’ll take a minute.”

The blue blade ignited with a now familiar hiss. Anakin took a step back, wrapping both hands around the hilt, then plunged the blade into the wall. It sank in nearly to the hilt, the mud brick around the blade blackening as Anakin drew the blade down at a sharp angle from right to left, then pulled it out and repeated the gesture from left to right, leaving behind a burned-looking X on the wall.

“We won’t be going in hot, but we’ll probably have company in a minute or so,” he said, taking one hand off the hilt. “Ready?”

Leia wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be ready for, but she pointed her blaster at the X anyway as Luke did the same. R2-D2 rolled prudently to one side. Anakin raised his free hand, drawing it back to his shoulder, and Leia felt pressure gather in the air around them, like the summer palace on Alderaan just before a thunderstorm. She saw Luke shake his head slightly, as though suddenly plagued by flies.

Anakin shoved at empty air and the place in the wall where he had cut the X went flying inwards, brick dust filling the air. It stung Leia’s eyes and made her cough, but she could see that there was now an empty space where part of the wall had been, more than large enough for several people to climb inside. She heard shouts – both from inside the spaceport and from the direction of the plaza at the end of the street.

“Luke, cover our six,” Leia ordered; Anakin didn’t know where the _Falcon_ was and she wasn’t planning to let him out of her sight until they were safely offplanet.

“Got it!” He fired at the stormtroopers who had appeared at the entrance to the plaza.

Anakin had already ducked into the hole in the wall, Artoo close on his heels as he used his thrusters to lift him inside. Leia followed, finding that he had cut his way into an empty docking bay; the doors lay open to the connecting corridor.

_Where in blazes are we –_

The spaceport wasn’t a large one, with only half a dozen docking bays, most of which had been empty when the _Millennium Falcon_ arrived. Given the amount of space needed to accommodate even a light freighter like the _Falcon_ , that still meant that the spaceport covered more than half a square kilometer. Leia squinted at the bay numbers near the doors, relieved to see that they weren’t far from the _Falcon_.

“This way!”

“Luke!” Anakin shouted, looking like he was ready to grab him and physically drag him inside if he had to, but Luke ducked inside a moment later, firing over his shoulder.

They ran towards the door. Anakin’s lightsaber was a bright gleam at the corner of Leia’s vision; he hadn’t bothered deactivating it. She skidded through the bay doors and out into the corridor just as blasterfire erupted behind them; Anakin yelled, “I’ve got our six, keep going!”

Leia glanced over her shoulder, seeing his lightsaber flashing as he deflected the oncoming blaster bolts almost too quickly to follow.

Another squad of stormtroopers came running around the corner. Leia fired at the one in the lead, squeezing off a trio of blasts that sent him down. She ran towards the closed doors of the nearest docking bay, firing as she went; blasterfire from close behind her told her that Luke was doing the same.

The doors opened as they approached, Chewbacca coming out with his bowcaster cradled in his arms. He roared when he saw the stormtroopers, laying down covering fire as Luke, Leia, and R2-D2 shot past him into the bay, Anakin following close behind.

This closer Leia could hear the familiar roar of the _Falcon_ ’s engines. She dashed up the ramp, turning to fire over her shoulder before Chewie hit the control to close the bay doors, which wouldn’t hold the troopers for very long.

She holstered her blaster as she ran through the _Falcon_ ’s narrow halls towards the cockpit. “Lando! We’re here –” She stumbled against the wall as the ship rumbled and lifted off.

“I got it, Princess!” Lando yelled back at her, his voice echoing oddly before he hit the shipwide comm. “Everyone strap in, this is going to be rough. Chewie, get your furry butt up here!”

Leia pressed herself back against the wall as Chewbacca went dashing past her towards the cockpit, the other three close behind. He threw himself into the copilot’s seat just as the bay doors exploded and the _Falcon_ shut upwards, out into open sky.

Leia flung herself into one of the passenger seats in the copilot, pulling the safety straps tight across her chest. Anakin took the second, while Luke shouted that he was going to cover them on one of the ship’s quad laser cannons and vanished down the ventral shaft. 

“We’re taking fire from those gunships,” Lando said distractedly, then swore as he jerked the _Falcon_ sideways to avoid a burst of laserfire.

Chewbacca moaned agreement.

“Get us into open space so that we can make the jump to lightspeed,” Leia ordered, resisting the urge to clutch at her chair.

“Working on it, Princess!”

Leia glanced at Anakin, whose shoulders were drawn tight with tension – she couldn’t tell whether it was nerves or if he just didn’t like someone else flying. At least he didn’t offer any suggestions; nobody liked backseat piloting.

They cleared atmosphere so quickly that Leia felt her ears pop. One of the viewscreens lit up with an incoming contact, and Chewbacca said something that Leia was certain was extremely rude. She leaned forward to see what it was, wincing when she recognized the shape of an Imperial light cruiser.

“Fighters!” Lando warned.

“I’m on it!” Luke yelled back, his voice echoing oddly.

Anakin made a pained face. Somewhere in the back of the _Falcon_ , there was a crash and a cry of dismay from C-3PO.

“Brace for hyperspace!” Lando barked, grabbed the lever, and pulled.

The transition tossed Leia against the back of her seat, but a moment later she relaxed at the sight of the star-lines streaking past in the viewport.

“Nice flying,” Anakin said, unclipping his safety straps. Leia did the same, belatedly holstering her blaster when she realized that she was still holding it in her lap.

Lando and Chewie turned around to stare at him. “You must be our Jedi,” Lando said after a moment. He held out his hand. “Lando Calrissian. This is Chewbacca.”

“Anakin Amidala.” This time he said it easily, shaking Lando’s hand without hesitation. “Modified YT-1300?” he added, glancing around the _Falcon_ ’s cockpit.

Lando grinned. “Yeah, the _Millennium Falcon_ belongs to a friend of mine. I did some of the mods, Han and Chewie here did most of the rest.”

“Nice,” Anakin said appreciatively, which was so contrary to almost every other reaction Leia had ever heard – or uttered – to the _Millennium Falcon_ that all she could do was stare at him in shocked silence.

He grinned comfortably, seeing her surprise. “I know starships. This one’s great.”

“Hold that thought,” Leia said. “You’re probably the only person in the galaxy aside from the owner who actually feels that way.”

“Hey now,” Lando said. “Don’t you know better than to disrespect a pretty lady?”

“The last thing the _Falcon_ is,” Leia pointed out, “is pretty.”

“She gets the job done!” he protested, and Chewie concurred with a long, drawn-out moan.

Anakin cleared his throat to get their attention. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” he said, “and not that I’m not glad for the rescue, but what exactly are you – _Threepio_?”

Leia turned to see him staring at the entrance to the cockpit, where Luke had appeared with C-3PO just behind him. He stepped aside so that the protocol droid could see who was speaking.

“I beg your pardon,” said C-3PO. “I don’t believe that we’ve been introduced. I am C-3PO, human –”

“– cyborg relations, yeah, I know,” Anakin said, with a strange look on his face. “You don’t remember me?”

“You _know_ him?” Luke said.

“Yeah,” Anakin said. “I built him. A long time ago.” He stared at C-3PO, who looked startled by this information. “I gave him to my wife for a wedding present. When was his memory wiped?”

“I don’t know,” Leia said, startled. “He used to belong to the captain of the _Tantive IV_ , along with R2-D2. I always thought that they were Alderaan droids.”

Anakin shook his head. “No, Artoo belongs – belonged to – he’s from Naboo, like my wife.” R2-D2 beeped sympathetically, and he blinked and glanced at the astromech. “Well, when you put it that way.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said C-3PO again. “Have I done something wrong?”

“I – uh, no, Threepio, you haven’t done anything wrong. I just wasn’t expecting to see you here.” He pressed his hands to his mouth, bending over slightly as though he had been struck, and for a second Leia thought that he was going to be sick. Then he said, “Force save me, she’s really dead, she’d never –”

Everyone in the cockpit, even C-3PO, went silent with horrified sympathy. After a moment Artoo rolled forward to bump against his knee, and Anakin swallowed, rubbed his ungloved hand quickly across his eyes, and straightened up. “Sorry,” he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion. “I’ve been – uh, out of the loop for a while. Some things just don’t seem real yet.”

Leia wished that she didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but some days she still looked around for her father or felt a moment’s distracted panic that she hadn’t started preparing for the Winter Running Festival yet or thought, _When I get home, I should_ – and then she remembered that Alderaan was gone. She knew what it was like to have the memory forcibly driven home by one thing or another.

She stood up and said, “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable to talk, Master Amidala –”

“Anakin,” he corrected, his gaze sharpening.

Leia nodded. “You must have a lot of questions. Maybe I can answer some of them for you.”

He nodded, standing up and dropping a hand briefly to Artoo’s dome. “Okay,” he said. “Lead the way.”

*

Leia took him through into a compact lounge area dominated by a dejarik table, followed by Luke and R2-D2. The two pilots remained in the cockpit; C-3PO had wandered back into the guts of the ship, apparently disconcerted by the attention.

Anakin sat down at the dejarik table, running his hands through his hair. He felt tired, rung out; somehow the appearance of the droids had brought home Padmé’s death, years old as it must have been, even more than Obi-Wan’s words. Padmé would never have sold or given away Artoo and Threepio. She knew how much they meant to him. Bail Organa must have gotten hold of them before someone else could do so, had Threepio wiped so that he couldn’t tell anyone what had happened –

What _had_ happened?

_There are some things that even a droid doesn’t want to remember,_ Obi-Wan’s voice whispered inside his head. _R2-D2 could be trusted to keep his – forgive the phrase – mouth shut, but C-3PO has always lacked his discretion. And he had no way to understand what he had seen._

“Nice to see you back with us,” Anakin muttered.

_You seemed to have things well in hand._

“I’m serious. I missed you.”

Luke and Leia had been muttering together near the entrance, but at this they both turned back to him in bad unison, a beat off each other. “Did you say something?” Luke said.

“No,” Anakin said. He let his hands dangle between his knees as Artoo rolled up beside him, beeping anxiously. “I told you, buddy, I’m fine,” he added to the droid. “Sort of.”

Artoo warbled his doubt about that.

“So you two, uh, know each other pretty well, huh?” Luke said after a moment.

“Yeah,” Anakin said, considered elaborating on that statement, and decided it probably wasn’t worth the trouble that would undoubtedly ensue from any further explanation. _Hey, this time yesterday I was twenty years in the past_ was going to be bad enough if he couldn’t think up a more believable story.

Leia and Luke glanced at each other.

“I guess I owe you guys a thank you, huh?” Anakin said to change the subject. “I was pretty close to getting my butt vaped back there.”

“It’s our pleasure,” Leia said, sliding into the seat across from him. She rested her hands on the table, her fingers clasped together. Luke leaned against the wall behind her, crossing his arms over his chest.

They were waiting for an invitation. Anakin tipped his head slightly and said, “You were saying something about the Rebel Alliance earlier, your highness?”

_Former Republic loyalists who oppose the Empire, often violently,_ Obi-Wan murmured, answering the question he hadn’t asked. Anakin sensed his beat of hesitation before he added, _About half of them actually sided with the Separatists during the Clone Wars, but oppose the Empire for the same reason that they fought the Republic during the war. They’re quite well-organized now, thanks to the former senators Organa and Mothma, among others._

“Yes,” Leia said, her voice overlaying Obi-Wan’s. “I represent the Alliance. My father was a friend of the Jedi –”

“Yes, I know – knew – Bail Organa,” Anakin said. Leia’s pain flashed through the Force, deep and strong enough to take Anakin’s breath away. She was Force-sensitive, strong but untrained. “I heard about Alderaan, your highness. I’m sure that you’ve heard this before, but I’m very sorry for your loss. Senator Organa was a good man, and a good friend. I never met Queen Breha, but my wife always spoke very highly of her and my partner knew her personally.”

Leia nodded, her gaze dropping for an instant before she looked up again. “Thank you. I’m – my mother died a long time ago, before Alderaan was destroyed.”

“I’m sorry,” Anakin apologized again, uselessly. He knew how inadequate words were when it came to the death of a parent; he still couldn’t encompass the death of the Jedi Order, let alone the death of a planet. “I didn’t know. I’ve been…away.”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant.” She studied his face for a moment, then went on. “As I was saying, my father was a friend of the Jedi and made a point of helping those that survived the Purge whenever possible. The Alliance strives to continue that legacy. Of course we’d be happy to have you in the Alliance if you want to join us, but if not, the _Millennium Falcon_ will take you anywhere you want to go. Right now we don’t have many resources to spare, but we have connections on a number of worlds, so arrangements can be made –”

“That won’t be necessary,” Anakin said, relieved that they didn’t seem inclined to ask where he had been since the fall of the Republic. Maybe it was considered to rude to ask a Jedi Knight why he wasn’t dead like the rest of the Order.

They looked at him with sudden hope. “If you’ll join the Alliance –” Luke began. “Or even stay for a couple of days –”

_Tell them that you want to go to Dagobah_ , Obi-Wan said suddenly.

“Da –” Anakin began, and just barely stopped himself from replying out loud. Luke and Leia must have caught the slip, but neither of them said anything, waiting for his response.

_Why do I want to go to Dagobah?_ Anakin thought furiously at Obi-Wan, hoping that he had formed the words clearly enough for his friend to pick up. Telepathy wasn’t normally a Jedi ability; it was almost impossible to learn and a relatively rare wild talent. _The whole planet is one giant swamp. I don’t think it’s even inhabited._

_Yoda is on Dagobah._

Anakin drew in a sharp breath. Obi-Wan had said earlier that Master Yoda had survived the initial attack on the Jedi, but he had assumed that, like Obi-Wan himself, Yoda had died sometime in the intervening two decades. If he was still alive, then he might know how Anakin could get back to his own time.

He blinked and turned his attention back to Leia, who was watching him with an expression of faint concern. “I need to go to Dagobah,” he said. “It’s an uninhabited system in the Outer Rim, in the Sluis sector –”

“I know where it is,” Luke said. He frowned at Anakin. “You’re going there to meet someone? Another Jedi?”

“What about it?”

“I might know him,” Luke said, sounding a little cautious. “Little green guy?” He held his hand out, palm down. “A little –” He gestured at his head. “Name of Yoda?”

“Yeah.” Anakin eyed him. He could tell that Luke was Force-sensitive and partially trained, but to Anakin’s senses he felt both like and unlike a Jedi. Not like a Sith or one of Dooku’s dark apprentices, or Anakin wouldn’t have gone anywhere with him, but half-familiar. Something new, maybe.

He caught Leia’s sudden wariness, but all she said was, “We may be able to accommodate that. I’ll have to discuss it with Lando and Chewbacca.”

“Of course,” Anakin said, feeling Obi-Wan relax slightly. He had the vague sense of his friend sitting beside him, shoulder to shoulder with Anakin, but knew that if he looked there would be nothing there. “And thanks again.”

Leia nodded and rose. Anakin sat back as she left the lounge, stretching his legs out beneath the table and glanced at Artoo, who warbled accusingly at him.

“Well, it wasn’t _my_ fault,” Anakin replied indignantly.

Artoo expressed his doubt on this subject.

“I’ll find you someplace to sleep,” Luke said.

Recognizing the invitation, Anakin stood up, wincing a little as his back popped at the movement. He wasn’t old, but Jedi didn’t exactly live easy lives, and the war was rough on everyone. Anakin had spent more time in the Halls of Healing over the past three years than he had in the ten years preceding the Battle of Geonosis. And he was one of the lucky ones. He was still alive.

_For now,_ he thought bitterly, but give it a few more weeks and it wasn’t at all certain he would be. Anakin had never wanted to be the last man standing. Obi-Wan had been, back on Naboo thirteen years ago, and Anakin had seen firsthand how it had ripped him apart. And that had only been in the wake of the death of one man, not the entire Jedi Order – not the entire Republic. Not the woman he loved.

_Padmé, my love, I’m so sorry._

He half-expected Obi-Wan to tell him not to be ridiculous, it wasn’t as though Anakin had killed her, but on this his friend was silent.

*

After Luke had gotten Anakin settled in one of the small cargo holds that had been converted to a passenger cabin the last time the _Falcon_ had ended up hauling people instead of freight, he returned to the small cabin that he shared with Leia, settling down on his narrow rack. He stared at the empty space in front of him until it became obvious that he was going to have to make the first move.

“I know you’re there,” he said. “I can sense you.”

Ben Kenobi shimmered into existence in front of him, his form briefly seeming to waver between that of a gingery man in his thirties and the much older man that Luke knew. It was fascinating, if nauseating, to watch, and Luke found himself a little disappointed when Ben eventually settled on his older form.

He sat down on the rack opposite Luke’s, which was still rumpled where Leia had slept in it, and crossed his legs primly. “You’ve done well, young Luke,” he said.

Luke frowned at him, several responses warring for precedence, and at last said, “I haven’t seen you around recently.”

Ben had the grace to look guilty. “I have been busy, I’m afraid.”

Luke bit his tongue on, _You’re dead, how busy can you be?_ and said instead, “Do you know this Jedi we picked up? He says that his name is Anakin Amidala.”

“Yes, I know him.” For a moment affection was warm in Ben’s voice, tinged with a kind of distant pain.

“Is he really a Jedi, then?”

“Anakin is an experienced and well-trained Jedi Knight, a former general in the Grand Army of the Republic, as I was,” Ben said. He stroked a hand over his beard, his expression tired. “He is my oldest and dearest friend.”

“Then why did you send me to Yoda, not to him?” Luke asked.

Ben looked every year of his age. “There are factors at play of which it is best that you remain ignorant for the time being, young Luke,” he said. “All you need to know is that Anakin is a Jedi, and my friend, and that he must get to Dagobah to speak with Yoda.”

Luke leaned forward. “That’s not good enough anymore –”

But Ben had already vanished.

“Blast,” Luke said uselessly.

*

Leia was in the lounge looking over the reports she had received in the last databurst from the Fleet, which R2-D2 had decoded for her after they had gone into hyperspace. She was aware of Lando and Chewbacca on the other side of the room, muttering to each other – well, Lando was muttering – about their latest plan to get Han out of Jabba’s custody. From what she could hear, this one didn’t seem to have any greater likelihood for success than the last dozen they’d considered and discarded. 

_We’ll get him back,_ she told herself, the datapad in her hands briefly forgotten. _The whole point of carbonite is to preserve organics indefinitely. It isn’t like he’s in any danger._

Except that he was, from a crazy Hutt lord who could decide at any moment that he didn’t like his new wall decoration, or that a frozen Han made a tempting target, or any number of unpleasant possibilities –

_That way lies madness_ , she told herself firmly, making herself concentrate on the Alliance reports. Most of them weren’t immediately relevant to their present situation; before they’d left the Fleet she had put in a request for any information on the known Jedi that had survived the initial Purge, but there was vanishingly little. Most of what there had been had been destroyed along with the rest of Alderaan, while the little pre-Empire data on the Order that had survived the fall of the Republic tended towards either the sensational or the ancient. It had all been sent faithfully along by one of the Alliance archivists and Leia was starting to think that she shouldn’t have bothered. Luke and his notoriously close-mouthed ghosts were probably a more accurate source of information about the Jedi.

She looked up as Luke came back into the lounge, followed by R2-D2. He dropped into a seat across from her and said, “I put him in the aft hold. What did Lando and Chewie say about Dagobah?”

“It’s doable. We’ve got enough fuel to make it there and to the nearest refueling station afterwards,” Leia said. She set the datapad aside on the dejarik table. “What do you make of him?”

“He’s definitely a Jedi,” Luke said. He looked a little starstruck. “I’ve never seen anyone use a lightsaber like that. Did you see that back there, that was –”

Leia smiled at his enthusiasm. “I saw it. He’d be good to have on our side, if he decides to stay with the Alliance.”

Luke scratched at his cheek. “Yeah, he would. I hope he does.”

“The Jedi generals were supposed to be the best warriors in the galaxy, according to my father,” Leia said, swallowing back that faint, familiar pang of loss. “That’s why I was on my way to Tatooine three years ago to get Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Luke frowned at the name, but all he said was, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope?” and grinned.

Leia snorted. “My father always spoke very highly of him.” She blinked as she remembered the earnest, handsome man she had seen standing beside Anakin on that rooftop – Obi-Wan Kenobi, twenty years younger and three years dead. Maybe Luke wasn’t the only one who saw ghosts. “Isn’t Anakin your father’s name?”

She saw Luke flinch slightly at the mention of his father. “Yeah, but it’s a pretty common name,” he said after a moment. “I met an Anakin working on one of the supply transports last year, there’s a Mon Cal doctor on one of the hospital ship and a Zeltron smuggler Han introduced me to once. It was popular on Tatooine for a while; the only human podracer pilot to win the Boonta Eve was an Anakin, but that was thirty, forty years ago. It’s probably not even his real name.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Leia agreed. “I wonder where he’s been for the past twenty years?”

“Hiding, probably,” Luke said. “Like Ben and Yoda. I’m not going to ask. They never really talk about it; I doubt he wants to.” He nodded at the datapad, clearly eager to change the subject. “Anything interesting from Fleet?”

“Just some chatter Intelligence picked up from Imperial channels,” Leia said. “They’re being pretty circumspect about it, but it sounds like they’ve lost track of one of their agents.”

“Anyone we know?” Luke asked, his eyebrows arching up. “And do you think our new friend had anything to do about it?”

“You’d have to ask him,” Leia said. “It’s Darth Vader who’s missing.”

*

Dagobah was on the opposite side of the known galaxy from Florrum, so even at the _Falcon_ ’s top speed it would take them the better part of a day to reach the system, and they would have to come out of hyperspace at least once to move into a different hyperlane. While the others went to catch some rack time and Threepio shut himself down in a remote corner of the ship, muttering to himself until the lights went out in his eyes, Luke went to go find the Jedi.

He could sense Anakin vaguely, a faint presence that buzzed at the back of his skull and reminded him of the kind of contact that blinked in and out on the sensor boards of his X-wing, where he was never quite sure if there was another ship out there or not.

Luke rapped his knuckles on the hatch to the converted cargo hold, hearing Anakin call, “Come in.”

The hatch slid open to reveal Anakin in the exact center of the room, upside down and balancing one-handed on four fingers and a thumb. When he saw Luke, he bent backwards in a smooth arc, coming up on both feet. He didn’t even look winded.

Luke could do that – or at least he had managed to do so once, with Yoda perched on top of him and chastising him every step of the way – but he hadn’t been able to replicate the move since, and he knew that he couldn’t land on his feet coming down from the handstand.

Anakin smiled at him, but there was a certain amount of wariness in the expression. “More questions?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Luke said. “I was hoping that you could help me with something.”

Within fifteen minutes they were both sitting cross-legged on the floor, the components of Luke’s lightsaber spread out between them along with the sheaf of notes that Ben had left behind. Anakin, his own lightsaber resting in his lap, listened patiently as Luke explained what he had done.

“Trust Obi-Wan to leave out the most important part,” he said once Luke had finished; Luke felt Obi-Wan’s amusement curl lazily in the air between them, as if the Jedi Master was watching them. Maybe he was. “Watch.”

He lifted his lightsaber – it looked, to Luke’s eyes, identical to the one he had lost in Cloud City, but Luke didn’t know how much variation there was in design. The Force gathered between them, holding the lightsaber hilt in place as Anakin released it. His gaze was dark with concentration as it came apart in midair, components and crystal spreading out in a straight line between the two halves of the hilt as Anakin moved his hands slightly apart.

“Most Jedi construct their first lightsabers when they’re still younglings, before they’re chosen as Padawans – as apprentices,” he explained, clarifying when he saw that Luke didn’t recognize the term. “There’s a ceremony around acquiring your first crystal, which we usually get from the caves on a planet called Ilum, although there are a couple of other places. Even though you don’t need to be a Force user in order to turn a lightsaber on, it’s impossible to construct one without using the Force – if a Jedi youngling can’t build their own lightsaber without laying a finger on the components, then they probably won’t become padawans.”

He flicked his fingers outwards, sending the lightsaber pieces spiraling up to hang in disorder between them. “I’ve heard that if you start with a blank crystal it will attune to you during the construction – which is a kind of meditation – and turn different colors, but I’ve never seen it done because the crystals from Ilum are all either blue or green.”

“There’s something wrong with my crystal?” Luke asked, picking it out of the pile of components in front of him.

“Your crystal’s fine,” Anakin said, glancing at it. “All your components are fine – it’s just the construction you’re stumbling on, because of course Obi-Wan never thought to mention that you have to do it all with the Force. Watch.”

He brought his hands down to rest on his knees, the lightsaber parts dancing in the air as he brought them together slowly enough that Luke felt he should be making notes. He did it twice more without being asked, then plucked his lightsaber from the air and looked at Luke expectantly, saying, “Now you try.”

It took Luke longer than it had Anakin, but by now he knew each lightsaber component so well that they felt individual and familiar in his mind, slotting together as though they had been made for each other, rather than raided from the X-wing maintenance bays. As the cap twisted on, Luke let out a sigh of relief, catching the hilt when it fell out of the air and into his palm.

“Try it,” Anakin said.

Nerves stung at Luke’s throat, but the blade sprang up humming in front of him when he depressed the controls, a pure brilliant green that made him feel calmer just looking at it. He deactivated it, looking across to see Anakin’s grin. The Jedi Knight tossed his own lightsaber hilt up and caught it. “Good job,” he said.

“Thanks,” Luke said gratefully. “I’m not sure that I would have thought about using the Force instead of every tool in my kit.”

“You’d have figured it out eventually,” Anakin said. He rose to his feet, offering Luke a hand up. “Is there anywhere on this ship we can spar? You’ll want to get a feel for your new saber, and I’m sure I’ve got a few tricks you haven’t seen.”

*

The captain of the Imperial light cruiser _Vigilant_ looked like he was expecting to attend his own execution. He stood at parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back as he faced the viewscreen, and even though his expression was as grim as death his voice never faltered.

“Although we recovered the shuttle _Adamas_ from the outskirts of the city, the Jedi escaped in a second vessel, the Rebel freighter _Millennium Falcon_. Several squads engaged him and identified his associates as Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, Luke Skywalker, and the Wookiee Chewbacca. Their ship had docked in the settlement’s spaceport using false identification that we didn’t recognize until after they had already blasted their way offplanet and jumped to hyperspace.” He took a breath, obviously waiting for Palpatine to respond, and when he didn’t, continued, “Shall we pursue, my lord?”

“That will not be necessary,” said Palpatine. He could sense the familiar bright star of Anakin Skywalker in the Force, and less welcome, the second half of the binary system he had thought long since destroyed. Even death, it seemed, could not keep Obi-Wan Kenobi from meddling in affairs that were none of his concern. “The Jedi will come to me. I can feel it.”


	4. Jedi on the Edge

Luke took the copilot’s seat as Chewbacca brought the _Millennium Falcon_ out of hyperspace in the Dagobah system. With only two passenger seats in the cockpit, Lando had taken the droids and decamped to the lounge, allowing Leia and Anakin to observe their descent onto the planet. Luke could sense Anakin’s faint tension as they broke atmosphere and swooped down over the thick, swampy forests that covered the planet; a pilot who didn’t like someone else flying him around, if he’d read him right.

They had to set down further away from Yoda’s hut than Luke would have preferred, but there wasn’t a closer clearing large enough for the _Falcon_ to land in. He left Chewie and Leia in the cockpit and followed Anakin to the ramp, relieved to see that they hadn’t landed in water the way he had the last time. Yoda probably could have lifted the _Falcon_ out the way he had Luke’s X-wing, but Luke really didn’t want to test that.

Anakin was already standing at the base of the ramp, his eyes shut and his head tilted slightly to one side as though listening to a voice no one else could hear.

“Do you want me to show you the way?” Luke asked.

Anakin opened his eyes. “No,” he said. “I know where I’m going.”

“We’ll wait for you,” Luke said. “Oh, wait –” He handed Anakin a comlink. “Just in case.”

“Thanks,” Anakin said, sliding the comlink into one of the pouches on his belt. “For everything. I appreciate it.”

“My father was a Jedi,” Luke said, and saw Anakin blink in surprise. For a moment he thought that he saw Ben too, standing in the shadows of the surrounding vegetation with panic brightening his eyes. “I guess I wish someone had been able to help him twenty years ago.”

Anakin squeezed his shoulder. “So do I,” he said, then turned and walked into the swamp.

*

Anakin didn’t know exactly when Obi-Wan joined him, but he noticed when Obi-Wan pushed a low-hanging branch out of his way.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Nice to see you again.”

“The situation was complicated,” Obi-Wan replied. “It seemed best to remove myself from the equation for a time.” He paused. “You and Luke seemed to get along well.”

“He’s a good kid,” Anakin said. “Reminds me of Ahsoka a little. He would have made a good Jedi.”

“He may yet.” Obi-Wan’s tone was thoughtful. Anakin glanced at him, frowning, and walked straight into a tangle of hanging moss – or spider web, possibly, though Anakin definitely didn’t want to meet the spider that produced _this_ – for his trouble. He had to ignite his lightsaber in order to cut his way free and was still clawing the sticky stuff out of his eyes when he stumbled into a knee-deep pool of stagnant water.

“I can see why Master Yoda retired _here_ ,” he said, splashing out and shaking some kind of small octopus off his left boot. “You’d have to be out of your mind to visit this place willingly.”

Obi-Wan, who had waited out the incident unencumbered by petty considerations like corporeality, came over to wipe a smear of mud off Anakin’s cheek. “That was undoubtedly a factor in his decision.”

“What, was there more than one?” Anakin asked dubiously. “I’m not really seeing any redeeming qualities.”

“Don’t trust your eyes, my old friend. Use your other senses.”

“You’re never going to stop thinking of me as your padawan, are you?” Anakin muttered, letting his perception roll out. He could sense Master Yoda, familiar in the Force, as well as Luke and Leia somewhere behind him with their friends – and something else, as well. “This planet – it’s steeped in the Force. It must be impossible to find a single soul here if you don’t already know where they are, and even then – for an experienced Jedi Master like Yoda it would be easy to hide.” He glanced at Obi-Wan, who looked pleased by the deduction. “I guess that’s a redeeming quality.”

“Indeed.” Obi-Wan crossed his arms over his chest as they recommenced walking. He hesitated for a moment. “You may find Yoda very different from the being you knew twenty years ago.”

“Yoda’s a century short of a millennium, how are a couple of decades supposed to rack up to that?” He stepped carefully around some kind of feathered snake that rattled its tail at him and stretched up to its full – impressive – height to show off a mouthful of sharp teeth and a forked tongue.

“Be careful, those spit venom,” Obi-Wan said absently, and Anakin took a few hasty steps backwards and tripped over a fallen log. Obi-Wan caught his arm and hauled him back to his feet.

“Thanks.”

Obi-Wan nodded, his fingers lingering for an instant before he released Anakin. “Master Yoda – he saw the death of the Jedi Order, the death of the Republic. He confronted Darth Sidious – the Emperor Palpatine –”

Anakin winced, but Obi-Wan was kind enough to pretend not to notice.

“They fought. The Emperor was too skilled for him, and Yoda barely escaped with his life. I don’t think that he’s ever forgiven himself for the failure.” Obi-Wan touched his fingers lightly to his brow, his head bowed. “I know the feeling.”

Anakin took a deep breath. “You and the Chancellor – I mean – you saw him?”

Obi-Wan shook his head slightly. “Only in the security holos from the Temple. Yoda sent me to kill his new apprentice.” He swallowed; his gaze going distant as the Force trembled at the memory. “Darth Vader.”

Smoke. Sulfur. Burning flesh. And flames, reflected in Obi-Wan’s eyes. “He beat you?” Anakin made himself ask, but he couldn’t see why a Sith Lord would leave Obi-Wan alive. And the only Knight in the Order who was a match for Obi-Wan with a lightsaber was Anakin himself, if Obi-Wan was right about Vader having been a Jedi.

“No.” He wouldn’t meet Anakin’s eyes. “I injured him and left him to die. I was – I _am_ – a Jedi Knight. I couldn’t kill y – a wounded, unarmed man. I thought – I thought that he would die quickly. He was very badly injured.” He was quiet for a moment. “I made a mistake,” he said at last. “It was a cruel thing to do, and millions have suffered for my mistake. Millions are suffering still. But I couldn’t kill him, even knowing what he had done.”

_You couldn’t avenge_ me? Anakin thought, tired and a little bitter, but knew better than to say it out loud. Vengeance wasn’t a Jedi pursuit. Anakin knew that himself, far too intimately. “That was the Jedi thing to do.”

“It was the wrong thing to do.” Obi-Wan looked down. “I saw the Chancellor’s – the Emperor’s – ship come out of hyperspace just as we were going in. I should have – but my ship was unarmed, and I had to get Padmé to a medical facility.”

Anakin grabbed his sleeve, his fingers starting to sink into the fabric before Obi-Wan gained enough corporeality that he could hold on. “Padmé was there?”

Obi-Wan nodded slowly. “I couldn’t save her, Anakin. I’m so sorry.”

It hurt to say the words, but Anakin forced them out anyway. “You weren’t the one who killed her. Vader did.”

“Yes.” Obi-Wan fell silent as they trudged through the swamp. Eventually, he said, “I told Yoda that I had found a Jedi who had fallen through time, but I didn’t tell him who it was.”

Anakin blinked, surprised. “But Yoda knows me.”

Obi-Wan’s voice was soft. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

Anakin frowned at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

They stepped out of the inch-deep water they had been wading through and onto solid ground, which didn’t look any different to the naked eye, but was at least less likely to contain poisonous amphibians. Anakin hoped so, anyway. Obi-Wan might be dead, but Anakin still had to worry about getting eaten alive by indigenous wildlife.

“Ow!” Startled, Anakin slapped at his stinging cheek, expecting some kind of biting insect. “What the – ow!”

Obi-Wan threw up his hands, the Force swelling around them as a barrage of small rocks bounced off the barrier he had created. “Master Yoda, wait! It’s all right, he’s with me.”

“Ever blind to Skywalker’s tricks have you been, young Obi-Wan.”

Anakin whirled, trying to find the source of Yoda’s familiar voice. He sounded older, a little creaky, as if he hadn’t spoken out loud for a long time. “Master Yoda? It’s me, I swear –”

“Fallen Anakin Skywalker has.” This time the voice came from his other wide. Anakin turned towards it, even though he guessed that Yoda was using the Force to throw his voice and was probably somewhere else entirely. “Lost he is, consumed by the Dark Side of the Force.”

Another rock came flying out of the shadows. Anakin batted it out of the air with the Force, careful to keep his hands away from his lightsaber in case Yoda decided to take it as a threat. A week ago – twenty years ago – he wouldn’t have worried. Today, though –

“Master, please,” Obi-Wan said, his hands still up, open and empty. “This is Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight of the Republic, I give you my word.”

“Master Yoda, it’s me,” Anakin repeated. “Anakin Skywalker. We’ve known each other since I was nine years old.”

“Beyond hope has Anakin Skywalker fled.” This time the voice came from behind him. “Beyond light and hope and fear he is.”

“That’s not me,” Anakin said, turning again before Obi-Wan caught his sleeve and held him in place. “I’m someone else. None of that has happened to me.”

“Master Yoda, search your feelings,” Obi-Wan pleaded, his gaze on a point in the trees. He moved slightly to put himself in front of Anakin. “You know it to be true.”

Anakin drew in a breath as he felt Yoda’s mind, still strong after all these years, probe at his own. Obi-Wan laid a hand on his wrist, his mouth working silent, his worry a faint shadow in the Force.

The pressure in his head eased. Yoda came slowly out of the tangle of vegetation Obi-Wan had been facing, bracing himself on his gimer stick. He looked old, old like Obi-Wan had looked old when he had first shown himself to Anakin, as though the events he had just barely survived had aged him far beyond even his advanced years.

Anakin knelt down, Obi-Wan’s hand moving to cup the back of his neck. Yoda made his way towards him, stopping several paces away and peering at Anakin suspiciously.

“It is me, Master Yoda,” Anakin said. “I don’t know how I got here. Will you help me get home?”

Yoda frowned at him, his expression equal parts tired and suspicious. He wasn’t wearing a lightsaber. “Anakin Skywalker you are,” he said at last. His gaze flickered up to Obi-Wan. Even more slowly, he added, “Anakin Skywalker you are, and no other.”

Anakin reached for one clawed green hand, folding it between his own fingers, gloved and ungloved. “Who else would I be, Master?” he asked.

*

Ensconced in Yoda’s hut, which was a far cry from his quarters at the Jedi Temple, Anakin explained what he could about how he had come to be here. He didn’t know how much Yoda remembered about the Clone Wars, but amidst the long centuries of Yoda’s life twenty years couldn’t be more than an eyeblink away.

Yoda listened without betraying any expression on his wrinkled face, but Obi-Wan, seated cross-legged beside Anakin, was paying close attention, his brows narrowed with interest. It was the first time he had heard the full story – not that there was much to tell, since Anakin still had no idea what had really happened.

“Odryn,” he said, after Anakin had finished. “I remember that deployment. It was fairly uneventful – most of Dooku’s troops had to be diverted to Iego when the fighting there started heating up and we didn’t have much resistance. We packed up what the archaeological survey team had left behind and took it back to the Temple. There were a few esoteric artifacts that might still have been viable, but they were encased in some kind of Force-nullifying resin.”

“The thing I picked up was definitely viable,” Anakin said dryly. He shaped it with his hands. “It looked like a bracelet or an armband, some kind of black metal, in the shape of two serpents eating their tails. They had red stones for eyes and gold teeth. And no, I didn’t put it on, I’m not stupid.”

Obi-Wan gave him a fond look. “Your taste when it comes to jewelry has never been in doubt.”

Anakin rolled his eyes. “It didn’t seem like Padmé’s style. She has a thing about snakes.”

Yoda clasped his hands together, looking pleased to have a question about esoteric Force artifacts to contemplate instead of – well, whatever it was he had been doing in a swamp for the past twenty years. Going mad, Anakin assumed; he looked less sane than Obi-Wan, and at this point, that was saying something.

“The Ouroboros of Jorl Muungar it could be,” he said thoughtfully. “A Sith Lord of the Old Republic was he, slain by a young Jedi five millennia past. Said it was that he sought to undo the bonds of the Force holding in place not only time, but all the branchings on the great tree.”

Anakin blinked, taking a moment to translate this to something he could understand. “An ancient Sith Lord created a device that could let him travel through time – through different universes? Is that even possible? I thought that was just the kind of theory that Jedi philosophers debate when they’re bored.”

“It seems unlikely,” Obi-Wan said when Yoda didn’t answer. “But the Jedi and Sith of the Old Republic could do marvelous things with the Force, things that today we would regard as impossible. And you are here, Anakin.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said. “Bully for me.”

“Infinite possibilities there are in the Force,” Yoda said. “Many futures – many pasts.” He leaned forward and poked Anakin in the chest with one claw. “For you, an infinity this is. For us, reality.”

Obi-Wan glanced aside, his face shrouded in the shadows thrown by the fire.

“For you as well, reality it is,” Yoda said, poking Anakin again. “Here you are, not there. In this life you live, not that one. And the other –”

Obi-Wan shook his head slightly.

Yoda frowned at him, his expression quelling. “There he is.”

Anakin was starting to feel a little lost. “I’m in both places at once?”

“I don’t believe so,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “There’d be no point otherwise to the Ouroboros, I think.” He glanced at Yoda. “If I’m understanding it properly, which I’m not sure about.”

“So why did I wake up in a Sith Lord’s rooms on a star destroyer?” Anakin asked.

Obi-Wan just shook his head. “You’ve traveled through time and you’re debating cosmography?”

“Well, when you put it that way –” Anakin spread his hands. “So how do I get back?”

Obi-Wan and Yoda stared at each other. Anakin felt a tremor in the Force, two of the most powerful Masters in the Jedi Order having a silent clash of wills. At last, Yoda said, “In the Jedi Temple, the Ouroboros is. Brought back from Odryn during the Clone Wars was it, stored for safekeeping. But to Coruscant go you must not!” He stabbed at Anakin’s chest with a sharp claw.

“Why not?” Anakin asked. “The Temple’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the Temple is still there,” Obi-Wan said. “But so is the Emperor.”

Anakin drew in his breath. “So I’d be walking into a Sith Lord’s lair.” He’d done a lot of crazy things since the war began, but not that one. “Okay.”

Obi-Wan stared at him with horror open on his handsome face. “What?”

“This isn’t my world, Masters,” Anakin said. “It’s – sorry, but you know what I mean, it’s horrific. I have to go home. I have to stop this from happening. It’s my duty as a Jedi.”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes. “Oh, my Anakin,” he said so softly that Anakin could barely hear him.

“Approve of this I do not!” Yoda said sharply. “Another Knight give over to the Sith I will not. Worse than death would that be.”

“It’s not your decision, Master Yoda,” Anakin said. “It’s mine. And I’m not afraid of Palpatine.”

“Not Palpatine it is you should fear.”

“I know what you’re afraid of,” Anakin said. “But I can’t be. Fear leads to the Dark Side. And I – I’m familiar with the Dark Side.” He dropped his gaze, feeling Obi-Wan’s distress reverberate through the Force. He couldn’t sense anything from Yoda. “But I am a Jedi Knight, too. I might be the last Jedi Knight left alive in the galaxy. Even if it kills me, I know what I have to do.” He met Yoda’s moss-green eyes. “I have to go home.”

Obi-Wan dropped a hand to his shoulder. “You won’t go alone.”

*

Later, much later, Anakin slept with his head pillowed on Obi-Wan’s half-substantial thigh. In sleep he looked like the boy he had been a lifetime ago, before the war and before the Empire. Before Mustafar.

Obi-Wan touched his hair lightly, saw it golden through his own fingers, and tried not to flinch as flames licked at his skin. _It’s not real_ , he reminded himself, but that didn’t stop the Force. He saw Anakin’s hair and skin blacken and burn, flesh melting away to reveal the bone beneath. He could smell it – death on the wind.

The death of joy, the death of the Republic, the death of the Jedi. The death of everything that Obi-Wan had ever loved.

_I did this_ , he thought, and raised his free hand to his mouth, biting down hard on his knuckle, willing the pain to cast out the vision. Time meant nothing to the Force. It made everything old new again.

The flames flickered into nothing, leaving Anakin whole and safe, a being of light once more and not a broken burned shell of the man that Obi-Wan had never stopped loving even as his lightsaber cut him down.

Some days Obi-Wan thought that the reason he hadn’t passed into the Force entirely wasn’t because of some ancient Force technique, but because he would never be whole again. Part of him had died on Mustafar, burned away with the last shards of Anakin Skywalker, and the rest of him had simply never bothered to catch up.

But Anakin was here now, close enough that Obi-Wan heard his heart beat and felt his breath on his skin, and he almost felt alive again.

He looked up as the door creaked and Yoda reentered the hut, his gimer stick tapping against the packed earth floor. The ancient Jedi Master studied them in silence, his expressive face creased in disapproval.

“Better it might be if to die young Skywalker was,” he said at last.

Obi-Wan looked up at him in shock, barely remembering to press a finger to Anakin’s forehead, letting the Force cradle him in sleep so that he didn’t hear the words. “What?”

“Death has he brought before.” He made his way to the fire and picked up the battered metal kettle warming beside it, shaking it before pouring some tea into a small clay cup. He made a gesture as though to reach for a second, then stopped. “Death he will bring again, if Sidious has his way. Perhaps death he will always bring.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No.”

“Know that you do not,” Yoda snapped.

“I know Anakin,” he said.

Disapproval thrummed through the Force, making Anakin shift a little in his sleep. Yoda studied him, his mouth twisting. “Said that before you have. And see what came of it then, we have!”

“It will not happen again. I will not permit it.”

Yoda gave him a look of profound disappointment. Obi-Wan stared back at him, as exhausted as it was possible for a dead man to be, and rested his hand lightly on Anakin’s forehead. “And how plan you to prevent this?” Yoda said. “Fall again could he. Always fall he may. His destiny perhaps it is to fall.”

“I haven’t believed in destiny for a long time now,” Obi-Wan said. “Anakin will not fail us this time. He still has something to live for.”

“Everything to live for he had once!” Yoda said sharply, liquid slopping out of his cup with the violence of his movement as he turned towards Obi-Wan. “Everything he had, and everything he sacrificed for the power of the Dark Side.”

“I know what he did,” Obi-Wan snapped. “I know better than you the horrors Darth Vader wrought in the name of the Emperor. And I know the difference between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader.”

Yoda eyed him. “Do you?”

“I know a Jedi Knight from a Sith Lord.”

Yoda sat down on a small cushion near the fire. “Heard your words to Skywalker, I did. A mistake you made on Mustafar. Rectified perhaps it can be.”

Obi-Wan stared at him. “We are Jedi, Master Yoda. We do not kill our own.”

“On a razor’s edge rests the fate of the galaxy,” Yoda insisted stubbornly. “Tip it into darkness Skywalker may.”

“We don’t kill our own,” Obi-Wan repeated. “That way lies the Dark Side. We act as the Force wills us and the Force has brought Anakin to me – to us again. He is a Jedi.”

Yoda shook his head sorrowfully. “Consumed by the Dark Side of the Force, Anakin Skywalker was. Dead he is. Dead you should consider him.”

Obi-Wan resisted the urge to bend protectively over Anakin, as if to shield him from Yoda’s words. “Anakin Skywalker – our Anakin Skywalker – is only dead because I killed him. I killed him more surely than Palpatine did, and killed something in myself at the same time. I lived for the sake of Anakin’s son, to see hope brought once more to this galaxy, and finished my dying at Vader’s hands. I know death, Master. I know life and death as only the dead can know them.”

Yoda sprang up, still surprisingly agile despite his age, and came over to poke a finger into Obi-Wan’s chest. “Oho! Dead you think you are? One with the Force you think? Dying do you remember?”

“I – no,” Obi-Wan said. “But I do remember being cut in half. Vividly.”

“Pfft. Flesh that was. Gone it is. Luminous beings are we. Created by the Force we are; into the Force you went.” He prodded Obi-Wan again. “Here now are you. Flesh. Bone. Muscle. You breathe. Your heart beats. Flows through you the Force does.” His hand snapped out, faster than even a Jedi’s eyes could track, and scored a line down Obi-Wan’s cheek with one sharp claw. “You bleed.”

Obi-Wan bit back a cry of surprise, raising his free hand to touch the cut. His fingers came away bloody.

“Dead you are not, young Obi-Wan,” Yoda said. “Merely between life and death. Kill Skywalker, you could, if so you desire.”

Still staring at his bloody fingers, Obi-Wan shook his head slowly. “I could not kill Anakin twenty-two years ago when he lay burning at my feet with the blood of our people on his hands. I will not kill him now when he has done nothing to deserve death.”

“Regret that decision, you may.”

“I dreamed Vader’s dreams for twenty years and burned with him every night of it,” Obi-Wan said. “Some part of me will always be on that bank on Mustafar watching Anakin burn alive because of what I did to him. I regret more things than even you can imagine, Master Yoda. But I am still a Jedi. I will not kill another Jedi and I will not kill him. I cannot do it.”

Yoda nodded slowly. He looked old, old and tired and near death. It wouldn’t be long now, Obi-Wan thought. “Then hope you must that into the hands of Darth Sidious he does not fall. Corrupted by him once Skywalker was. Tell him, will you?”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “I won’t. I can’t.”

“Trust him you do not,” Yoda observed.

“I trust Anakin with my life,” Obi-Wan said, looking down at Anakin’s face, peaceful in sleep, and touched his friend’s cheek. His still bloody fingers left a smear of red behind. “As you said, Master, Anakin Skywalker died at the hands of the Sith. To learn otherwise would destroy him.”

He could feel the heat from the fire on his face as he said, “We failed each other last time. It will not happen again. I will not allow it.”

Yoda shook his head, sorrowful. “In your hands that decision may not be.”

*

Anakin returned to the _Millennium Falcon_ in the morning, his expression thoughtful. Luke was half-expecting to see Yoda beside him, but he came alone, his hands open and empty by his sides, and smiled when he saw Luke and R2-D2 at the foot of the _Falcon_ ’s ramp. A flicker of blue light amidst the surrounding vegetation hinted at Ben’s presence, but when Luke looked there was no one there.

“Did you find Yoda?” he asked after Artoo had finished what he assumed was an irritated screed of high-pitched beeping.

Anakin nodded. “Yeah. That was –” He shrugged. “Different.”

“He’s like that,” Luke said, looking in the direction Anakin had come from. He wondered if he ought to go and see Yoda, but the last time that he had been here, he had promised he would come back and finish learning to be a Jedi. He didn’t have time for that now. He wouldn’t have time until they had rescued Han from Jabba’s clutches.

Anakin shook his head. “Not when I knew him.” He sat down on the ramp, letting his hands dangle down between his knees. “He was the Grand Master of the Jedi Order – the highest ranking Jedi in the Republic – a skilled general, a cunning warrior, and one of the wisest beings I ever met.” A frown shadowed his features. “He was a traditionalist, though. He isn’t much younger than the Republic itself and he trained with the Jedi of the Old Republic, centuries before you or I were born.” His gaze slanted sideways at Luke. “I guess he’s not much of a traditionalist anymore.”

Luke sat down beside him. “What do you mean?”

“He trained you, didn’t he?” At Luke’s nod, Anakin said, “Most Jedi come – came – to the Temple very young, only a year or two old. We grow up in the Temple, raised and trained among other Jedi. We are Jedi our entire lives, from birth to death.” His gaze flickered to the tree line, where Luke thought he had seen Ben earlier. “I was nine years old when a Knight found me and brought me to the Temple to be tested, to see if I was strong enough in the Force to train as a Jedi. I was – but Yoda and some of the other members of the Jedi Council refused to allow it because I was too old.”

“At _nine_?” Luke said, staring. “What changed?”

Anakin smiled at the memory, though there was a shadow to it. “Obi-Wan Kenobi bullied the Council into it after the Battle of Naboo. Yoda still didn’t want it then – like I said, he was a traditionalist – but enough of the Council had changed their minds that Obi-Wan was permitted to take me as his apprentice once they had knighted him.”

“ _Ben_ trained you?” Luke said, surprised. “I thought –”

“Is that what you call him? That used to be his codename, back when we did undercover missions – not often, I’m not any good at it and we were better generals than we were spies. He did a lot of undercover work when I was a kid, though.” He glanced down, still smiling idly. “I was more or less in remedial training then to make up for the nine years I missed, so I couldn’t go with him.”

Luke tried to imagine a galaxy filled with Jedi, tried to imagine Ben Kenobi young and dangerous, tried to imagine Yoda as the warrior Anakin described, and couldn’t do it.

Quietly, Anakin added, “I can’t believe they’re all dead.” He rested his head in his hand, staring into the vegetation and looking suddenly very tired. “Do you know the Jedi code?”

Luke shook his head.

“There’s a line in it, _there is no death, there is the Force_. I guess it’s supposed to be soothing. Jedi aren’t supposed to mourn, you see. Our dead never truly leave us; they exist forever in the Force.” He looked up at the sky. “I learned during the war that it doesn’t make them any less dead.”

He stood up, dropping a hand briefly to Luke’s shoulder and squeezing, then went into the _Millennium Falcon_. Artoo warbled softly and followed him.

Luke looked up as a branch cracked and Ben Kenobi walked out of the surrounding vegetation, flicking aside some low-hanging moss. This time he was young, a tired-looking man not much older than Han or Lando in a cream-colored tunic and trousers, his face shadowed by the hood of his brown cloak. He put it back as he approached, revealing a fresh scratch on his cheek, sitting down next to Luke and resting his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling down between his knees. It was the same way Anakin had sat.

“Do you think I should go talk to Yoda?” Luke asked.

“I think he’s had enough of Skywalkers for the time being,” Ben said, then flinched a little, like he had given away a secret.

“Is he angry that I left before? I had to,” he added, clenching his prosthetic right hand and looking down at the way the leather of his glove stretched over the knuckles. “I couldn’t leave my friends to suffer and die.”

He hadn’t been able to save Han, but he knew in his bones that he had made the right decision, no matter what Ben and Yoda said. If being a Jedi meant letting his friends die instead of him, then he didn’t want to be a Jedi. Not like that.

“Anakin was right,” Ben said after a moment. “Yoda is very much a traditionalist, even now – now more than ever, perhaps, when it serves him the least.” He glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the ship where Anakin had vanished a few minutes earlier, his expression shadowed. “You were right to try and save your friends, young Luke. I would have done the same – I did, many times, when I was younger.”

_Then why did you tell me not to go?_ Luke thought, but he didn’t say as much. He thought that he knew why. He and Ben sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the others going about their business in the ship: Lando greeting Anakin cheerfully, Chewie’s drawn-out moan, Leia grumbling into her cup of caf.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about the Jedi code?” Luke asked eventually.

Ben didn’t answer immediately. Finally, he said, “For a time I stopped believing in it. When the Republic fell, I had lived by the code my entire life, but in the end it failed me. _There is no death, there is the Force_ …. I have seen the death of worlds, young Luke. I held the man who raised me as a father as he died, felt the life go out of a woman I would gladly have called sister, cut down the man I loved more than a brother – loved more than anything else in the galaxy – and watched him burn on the shores of a river of flame. I have seen friends, children, lovers, and innocents die by the thousands. It becomes very hard to believe that there is no such thing as death when you have seen your own world burn to ash.”

Luke drew in his breath. Ben had never spoken of the Jedi Purge or the fall of the Republic except in the most general terms. For Luke it might have been ancient history, but it was clear that, for Ben – and no doubt for Yoda and Anakin – it was a very real, very painful memory.

“Do you still believe that?” Luke asked. “Even though –” He made a vague gesture at Ben.

“I don’t know,” Ben said simply. “As long as I don’t dwell on it, I trust in the Force. If I do –” He rested his cheek in the curve of one hand, his gaze distant. “I don’t know if I want to live in a world where what happened to the galaxy was the will of the Force.”

“But you aren’t living in it, are you?”

He didn’t answer. When Luke looked over, Ben was gone. Only the smell of smoke remained to show that he had ever been there at all.

*

The _Millennium Falcon_ didn’t dare travel deep into the Core Worlds, since Imperial patrols had been increased in response to some unknown event. Of course Lando knew a guy who knew a guy, and the _Falcon_ spent the better part of two standard weeks tracking back and forth through the Mid Rim trying to find the guy in question. Luke saw worry gnaw at Anakin as the days dragged on, but the Jedi Knight never let it show except in passing moments, turning his head occasionally to whisper an inside joke to a ghost no one else could see, bowed over with the terrible grief of a destroyed world, his lower caught between his teeth as he watched HoloNet broadcasts.

Luke was surprised by how much he enjoyed having Anakin around. He had learned fencing from a Rebel who had been a duelist in his youth on Telerath, where the gangs all used swords in the pursuit of something like peace, but a steel blade wasn’t the same thing as a lightsaber, which had no weight except for the hilt. Anakin, in contrast, had grown up training with a lightsaber, so that when he fought it was an extension of his body, part of him as surely as an arm or a leg. When he moved, his blade was little more than a blue blur even to Luke’s Force-enhanced vision, but he was patient with Luke, teaching him the rudiments of each lightsaber form and a few useful tricks he had picked up, as he said, “here and there.” Sometimes there were stories behind each move, Anakin grinning with youthful delight as he told Luke, and sometimes the others, who liked to watch their practice, about one mission or another. Once or twice Luke saw Ben watching from the corner of the hold, smiling beneath the hood of his cloak as the blue and green lightsabers clashed.

Anakin seemed to have an endless collection of stories from the Republic – missions that he had gone on with Ben both before and during the Clone Wars, accounts of scandals in the Senate cadged from his wife, Jedi fairy tales which probably hadn’t been heard in twenty years and would probably never be heard again. Occasionally in the telling of these he looked to his left or right, as though expecting someone else to be at his side, and when he saw that there was no one there his voice faltered on the words before he caught himself.

He never talked about anything that had happened after the fall of the Republic. By mutual silent agreement no one asked where he had spent the last twenty years of his exile, but Luke saw Leia listening to a story about a hostage crisis at the Senate with an increasingly deepening frown. When Anakin had finished and Lando and Chewie were tossing back and forth increasingly insane ideas to get Han out of Jabba’s clutching, Leia caught Luke’s sleeve and dragged him aside.

“I know that story,” she said. “My father used to tell it.”

“Okay,” Luke said. “So –”

“So everyone involved is dead. Everyone.”

Luke swallowed. There had been more than a dozen senators in Anakin’s story, Bail Organa and Anakin’s unnamed wife amongst them, as well as the bounty hunters that had held them captive. “Okay,” he repeated. “A lot of senators died in the first years of the Empire, I know that.”

“The name he’s not saying is Padmé Amidala,” Leia said. “She was the Senator from Naboo during the last five or six years of the Republic, and one of my father’s best friends. I didn’t make the connection before because she died before I was born – she was murdered the day that Palpatine declared himself emperor.”

“The Emperor ordered it,” Luke guessed.

“Nobody knows,” Leia said. “The official report says that she was murdered by rogue Jedi, but –”

“What are the chances of that?” Luke said dryly, and Leia nodded. He glanced over his shoulder at Anakin, who was saying something to Chewie. “Do you think he knows?”

“He knows she’s dead,” Leia said. “On Naboo married couples take the surname of whoever ranks higher. A senator and former queen – they’re democratically elected on Naboo, not inherited like on Alderaan – would outrank a Jedi Knight, I think. But she’s been dead so long that hardly anyone remembers her.” She was quiet for a moment. “I wouldn’t know who she was if she hadn’t been one of my father’s friends – Mon Mothma’s too, but they weren’t as close. There was a portrait of her in my father’s office. When he was drunk, he used to call her the best women he had ever known. I always thought that he knew more than he said about how she died, but I never asked him about it. She’s been dead for so long.”

Luke laid a hand on her shoulder and pulled her into a hug as she finished quietly, “And now he’s dead too. Everyone in that story is dead.”

“Except him,” Luke said.

Leia looked past him and frowned. “Except him,” she said. “Why isn’t he dead?”

*

Lando’s friend came through for them on Nal Hutta, which Lando had arranged upon hearing a rumor that Jabba was going to be onplanet. Although nominally part of the Empire, the Hutts didn’t allow any Imperial troops to be stationed onplanet, so the _Falcon_ was able to dock in the Bilbousa spaceport without any hassle aside from the usual extortion and bribery that constituted the docking fees.

Luke walked Anakin over to Docking Bay 42, where the passenger transport Anakin was taking to Corellia was boarding. Dressed in civilian clothes, with his lightsaber concealed in a shoulder holster hidden by his jacket, Anakin looked like any other young spacer. He turned to Luke just outside the bay doors.

He had already said his farewells back on the _Falcon_ , where the others were laying low after Chewie had spotted one of Jabba’s informants. Luke, who as far as anyone knew was a nobody as far as the Hutts were concerned, had been deemed safe to walk around.

“If this works out,” Anakin said slowly, “you’ll never see me again. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll probably be dead.”

“That sounds like the recruiting poster for the Rebel Alliance,” Luke said lightly.

Anakin didn’t smile. “Obi-Wan was right,” he said. “You’ll make a good Jedi someday. And you should know the truth.”

Luke’s smile froze on his face. That wasn’t something he wanted to hear, not after the last time someone had told him the truth. 

“I didn’t survive the Purge,” Anakin said quietly. “A couple of weeks ago I was still fighting in the Clone Wars. A Sith artifact knocked me out of my own time – sent me here.” He caught his lip between his teeth as Luke stared at him. “I’m going to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant to see if I can get home in time to stop this future from coming true. I’ll probably end up dead again, but I have to try. But at least there will be someone to remember me.”

Luke swiped his tongue over suddenly dry lips. “And what name should I remember?”

“Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker,” Anakin said, clasped Luke’s shoulder, and walked off into the crowded docking bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sword-dueling on Telerath comes from _Star Wars: Dark Times: #13-17: Blue Harvest_ , while the Senate hostage crisis is from Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode 1.22, "Hostage Crisis."


	5. In the Halls of the Dead

Six weeks after originally departing from Christophsis, the passenger liner _Star of Commenor_ docked at Galactic City Spaceport on Coruscant. Due to the new security restrictions on the imperial capital, it took more than three hours for the passengers to fully disembark, complicated by the fact that more than a dozen of the two thousand, four hundred and thirty five passengers were escorted aside by spaceport security for further investigation. Several hours after the debarkation had concluded, the temporary crew members that the _Star_ had picked up on Corellia, Chandrila, and Rendili were released. Unlike the passengers, the extent of their security check was restricted to a quick scan of their identichips by PortSec, searching for anyone flagged by the Imperial Security Bureau. Only a handful were held back, mostly due to smuggling or spice possession, though one old Rodian turned out not only to have outstanding warrants on three worlds for gun-running, but eighteen Gee-Tech Personal Defense microblasters concealed beneath a false bottom in his suitcase. The rest of the crew was let loose to roam the streets, pedestrian walkways, and sky lanes of Coruscant to their hearts’ desire.

One of these was a tall human male with an easy smile and warm blue eyes. He had joined the crew on Corellia as a junior engineer, spending most of his time on the _Star_ down in the engines out of the way of the passengers and most of the crew. Despite his apparent youth, he had the haunted look of a war veteran or a survivor of some great disaster; he was the kind of being that was sometimes called fey, a reputation which was not aided by the fact that he occasionally addressed remarks to empty air.

Although some of the other engineers invited him to join them at a nearby cantina, he waved off the invitation with a smile and headed off towards one of the spaceport’s speeder rental stands. He had the confident stride of a Coruscant native, ignoring the passing stormtrooper patrol with the haughty disdain of a planetary ruler. Minutes after renting a decrepit-looking swoop bike, he zoomed off along the sky lanes and vanished.

*

“That should do it,” Anakin said, his back popping as he straightened up. He wiped his fingers reflexively clean on his trousers, even though the most he had done was move a few wires around to trick the swoop bike’s transmitter into thinking that the bike was a few klicks to the east. As far as the rental company was concerned, he was parked in the middle of the occidental entertainment district where he and Obi-Wan had cornered Zam Wessell after her assassination attempt on Padmé. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

It had been a lifetime ago. Even though he had only been back on Coruscant for a few hours, already Anakin was starting to feel the weight of the years that had passed him by in a way he hadn’t on the _Millennium Falcon_ or the _Star of Commenor_. Here on the edge of the Temple district, in the shadow of the Temple itself, Anakin could feel the first edges of the psychic stain that lay over the place he had called home for thirteen years. The death of a single Jedi, violent, unexpected, could leave ripples in the Force for years afterwards; Anakin felt the Force murmur in vague disquiet every time he walked into the palace at Theed. Only once had he ventured into the refinery complex where Qui-Gon Jinn had died; the psychic backlash that remained, even a decade later, had nearly made him pass out.

Since then, Anakin had been around enough dead Jedi that the worst it had done in years was give him a headache. Here, though, he wanted to throw up or pass out or some combination of the two, and he wasn’t even on the Temple grounds yet.

Obi-Wan, standing on the pavement where he had parked his bike, was looking up at the bulk of the deserted Jedi Temple. His face was shrouded by the hood of his cloak; all Anakin could sense from him was despair. He was feeling pretty close to despair himself.

He didn’t even need to be Force-sensitive to realize that something was wrong here. Every square inch of Coruscant had been built on over thousands of years, occupied by generations of beings. The last time he had been onplanet, the Temple district had been buzzing with life. The long shut-down Jedi docking complex had been reopened as a result of the war, while the starfighter staging area had had to be enlarged to accommodate the hundreds of new ships required. Beyond that there were training areas, greenhouses, generator and refinery complexes, housing for non-Jedi staff, and a dozen other necessities that Anakin had never bothered to learn. Now it all sat empty.

At least, he thought grimly, he wouldn’t have to worry about running into anyone on his way into the Temple.

He touched his fingers to his lightsaber hilt for reassurance, slipping it out of its shoulder holster and clipping it to his belt. He was going home. He wasn’t going to hide what he was, even if he wasn’t wearing his robes.

“How bad can it be?” he said out loud, before realizing that he was starting to turn back towards his swoop bike to check the wiring again. Anakin forced himself away with a jerk, taking one step towards the looming bulk of the Temple, then stopping and backing up.

Obi-Wan turned towards him. He had lost most of his glow somewhere along the way and now, shadowed by his cloak, he looked sepulchral, more like a dead man walking than he had at any point since Anakin had arrived. The look on his face was answer enough.

Anakin shut his eyes. _Five steps_ , he thought, _you can do five steps_ – and then five more, and five more after that, until he was home again.

He took the steps. He didn’t know how he managed it, but somehow he did. He walked through the empty streets of the Temple district, passing buildings whose broken windows yawned at him like skulls, a landing platform where a pair of familiar Jedi starfighters sat abandoned, their bright paint faded and transparisteel canopies pitted, a greenhouse of which only the frame remained, blackened and warped by a long-ago fire. Anakin wanted to stop and throw up, but he knew that if he stopped he might not be able to keep himself from running in the opposite direction.

At least there weren’t any bodies. But there wouldn’t be, not after twenty years.

He skirted around the walls bounding the Temple grounds, not wanting to use the massive main entrance. There were plenty of ways in and out of the Temple, most of which Anakin was familiar with after a childhood spent ducking out in order to participate in Coruscant’s various high speed sports. Obi-Wan was familiar with them from having to follow him out.

He said as much to Obi-Wan, just to have something break the horrible silence. He could still hear the usual unceasing hum of Coruscant – the planet that never slept – but here it was dulled almost to nothing, muted half by distance and half by the psychic stain left behind by the massacre of the Jedi.

Obi-Wan gave him the ghost of a smile and said, his voice muted, “I remember.”

By now Anakin had passed a handful of back doors and service entrances, but he was aware of the faint whine of electricity that meant they were still hooked into the security grid – though, he suspected, it no longer reported back to Temple Security, but instead to somewhere much less familiar. Even if his or Obi-Wan’s codes to get in still worked, it would set off an alarm in an office somewhere, which would undoubtedly result in a strike team being deployed more or less on top of him.

Instead, Anakin circled around to a low spot in the walls that would let him out into a small garden constructed centuries past for a Neti Jedi’s private use and reached out very, very delicately through the Force to make sure that there weren’t any nasty traps waiting on the other side. Once inside the Temple he would have to use the Force to get into the secure vaults, but doing so would set off an alarm of a very different kind; if Palpatine was on Coruscant, then he would be able to tell that a Jedi was on the planet. Obi-Wan’s presence didn’t seem to have set off any alarms, but Anakin didn’t think that he interacted with the Force the same a normal Jedi would have done, since he seemed to consist mostly of pure Force energy.

As far as he could tell, there wasn’t anything on the other side of the wall except a bunch of overgrown greenery, nor had the wall itself been alarmed. Anakin eyed it dubiously, then took several long loping strides backwards and ran at it, thrusting himself up off the ground with another faint touch of the Force. He caught the top of the wall and hauled himself over, then dropped lightly to the ground, his fall cushioned by some sort of green bush with red flowers that started to snap at him, then drew back in startlement after the first one had brushed against his ankle. As far as Anakin could tell, they weren’t quite sentient, but they were mildly Force-sensitive, and they seemed to be able to recognize that he was a Jedi and not the ordinary course of intruder.

“Sorry, guys,” he muttered, fumbling his way out of the bush and landing in an equally overgrown hedge which, at least, didn’t seem inclined to eat him.

Obi-Wan – Anakin hadn’t seen him come over the wall, but for all he knew Obi-Wan had simply walked through it – caught his arm and hauled him to his feet. They made their way out of the small garden, which was nearly as overgrown as the swamp on Dagobah, and in through a back door into a dusty meditation chamber.

Anakin sneezed, muffling the sound on his sleeve. It didn’t look like anyone had been in here in at least twenty years, maybe longer. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” he said. “What if the Ouroboros isn’t here anymore? Dark Side artifacts have got to be the first thing that the Sith would steal from the Temple.”

Obi-Wan tilted his face up towards the ceiling, reaching up to push his hood back. “It’s here,” he said. “I can sense it.”

“You _can_?” Anakin said as they made their way towards the door. It opened at his touch, moving a little sluggishly; power cells still charged, but quiescent for two decades, he guessed. “That’s new. Is there anything else?”

Obi-Wan frowned. “Several dozen other artifacts, all of them exceptionally nasty but all encased in various Force-nullifying materials. They were all stored off-site originally, but when the war began the Council judged it safer to remove them to Coruscant where they were less vulnerable. Only a handful of Masters had access.”

There was a better than even chance that Anakin could slice his way in, but – “Were you one of them?” he asked, hoping the answer was yes.

Obi-Wan nodded, his expression faintly troubled. “There were some experiments being carried out at one point,” he offered as explanation, as though he really thought that he needed to say why.

Anakin supposed that he did, at least to himself. Obi-Wan hadn’t even been a Master for three years yet, a Council member for slightly less than that, and other, more senior Masters had been passed over for the position when it had come open. Anakin didn’t see why he worried, frankly. A lot of the more senior Masters were hidebound with tradition or unfortunate pacifist tendencies – great during peacetime, not so much in the middle of a war where the enemy was prepared to do anything it took to win. Besides, even up against legends like Mace Windu and Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi was still the only Jedi in the Order to have killed a Sith Lord in over a thousand years.

The meditation chamber had let them out into a bedroom of some sort. This door reacted to his touch with a little more eagerness, but Anakin hesitated before stepping out into the hallway. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to turn and run the other way.

Even through the tattered remains of the long dead Jedi’s shields, he could still sense the shadow that lay on the Temple itself. It hummed in his head like a twisted prayer to a malicious god.

It was only a building, Anakin told himself. It was only a building, and the same building that he had called home since he was nine years old. He had to go on if he ever wanted to see Padmé again, to see Obi-Wan smile – _really_ smile, without twenty years of pain and betrayal and heartbreak in it – to see the Jedi Order whole once more.

It was just a building. It would be stupid to give up now.

Shaking like a leaf, Anakin Skywalker stepped out into the corridor.

*

The force of it was enough to drop him to his knees, digging his fingers into the marble floor as he gasped for breath. The original Temple building had been constructed to channel the Force, and after so many millennia of occupation by hundreds of thousands of Jedi, the walls themselves resounded with it.

It turned out that they held the Dark Side just as well as the light.

The time of dying was echoed back at Anakin from every direction, a psychic assault that battered at his mind as well as all of his other senses. He saw as faint dim ghosts Jedi running past him towards the main hall, their lightsabers ignited; heard blasterfire and the sounds of their screams – the screams of _children_ – as they died; smelled fire and death and blood; felt a lightsaber hilt in his hand and a battle cry in his throat.

Obi-Wan dragged him back to himself, crouched down beside Anakin with one arm around his shoulders and his other hand buried in Anakin’s hair, murmuring in his ear. Anakin didn’t know what he was saying, but eventually the sound of screaming coalesced into Obi-Wan’s voice and his own harsh breathing. The Force still echoed the massacre back at him, but Anakin was no longer lost in it.

It took another minute for Obi-Wan’s words to be anything but a blur of sound. “It’s just a memory,” he was saying. “It can’t harm you anymore. It’s just a memory.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Anakin warned him, and scrambled aside as Obi-Wan released him to be neatly sick against the wall.

It didn’t really help, but at least it eased the knots in his stomach, and Anakin crawled weak-kneed back to Obi-Wan. He put his head on his friend’s shoulder and wept like the child he hadn’t been in years, sobbing into the folds of Obi-Wan’s thick cloak until he felt empty and scraped raw, and still the Force echoed with the death of the Jedi.

“How can you stand it?” he whispered.

Obi-Wan’s arms were tight around him. He hadn’t held Anakin like that in years. “This isn’t my first time,” he said.

Anakin didn’t want to imagine getting used to this. He pushed himself to his feet, swaying like a reed in the wind, and tried to pretend that he couldn’t see Obi-Wan tensing to catch him if he fell again. “Let’s get the Ouroboros and get out of here,” he said, his voice harsh to his ears. He felt it echo oddly through the empty halls, as if it had been a long time since anyone spoke here.

Obi-Wan rose gracefully to his feet, wrapping his cloak around himself. “Are you all right?”

Anakin dug the heel of one hand into his forehead, as though he could excise the screaming in the Force if he just tried hard enough. “No. But it’s not going to get any better the longer we stay here. I don’t really want to see just how bad it can get.”

“Nor do I,” Obi-Wan said. He reached out as though to touch Anakin, then stopped, his hand still outstretched as though he had thought better of the gesture.

Anakin grabbed his hand and hung on for a moment before releasing him, reassured by the familiar strength of Obi-Wan’s grip. At least he wasn’t alone in all this.

He and Obi-Wan made their way quickly down the hallway, moving through the familiar, eerily empty corridors of the Jedi Temple. Even during the height of the war there had always been people here – younglings, padawans whose masters had been killed, teachers and healers and Knights who were unable or unwilling to fight. Seeing the Temple empty, its walls and floor scarred by blaster bolts and a few faded stains that might have been blood, made Anakin sick to his stomach.

Or maybe that was just the psychic backlash.

Either way, Anakin found himself repeatedly touching his lightsaber hilt, glancing sideways at Obi-Wan to make sure that he was still there. His senses were so overwhelmed by murk in the Force that he could barely sense Obi-Wan even when he was looking straight at him; Anakin was uncomfortably aware that they were dangerously vulnerable to attack, since he probably wouldn’t even sense a Sith Lord until he had an enemy lightsaber buried in his gut.

As they walked, Anakin’s steps sounding eerily in the empty halls, the temple lights began to flicker slowly on in response to their progress. Anakin couldn’t remember if the lights were motion-activated or not; he had the unnerving impression that over the millennia a kind of semi-sentience had formed within the Temple walls in response to the hundreds of thousands of Jedi that had called it home. He couldn’t sense anything like a mind here, but the Force-echoes of the massacre had faded to a bearable level, as if the Temple had realized his distress.

He chanced a look at Obi-Wan as they made their way towards the northwest spire, where holocrons and Force artifacts had been stored for generations upon generations. To get there they had to cross the cavernous expanse of the front hall; the only way to go around would take them more than a mile out of their way.

In the thin light streaming in through the open doors of the Temple – one of which was broken, hanging off its hinges and looking like the only thing holding it up was the Force – Obi-Wan seemed hollow and drained, his face like a skull with skin stretched thin over the bone. Anakin caught a whiff of smoke in the air – in the Force – and couldn’t work out whether it came from Obi-Wan or the Temple itself. It could easily have been either. It could easily have been both.

He took a slow, sliding step out into the main hall, his reluctance to step out there making him drag his feet. He felt the Force ripple in response, as if confused by the entrance of a living Jedi into the place of its greatest dying. The massive columns lining the hall were battered and pitted by blasterfire and weather, their once bright colors faded almost to uniformity. The scattered statues of long-dead Jedi had been abused – some graffittied over, others with limbs missing or faces smashed in. Only one – a former Grand Master from the old Sith Wars – remained untouched, but even she had suffered without proper upkeep, the bronzium of her statue greenish and discolored.

On most planets Anakin would have expected animals or squatters to have taken up residence in the Temple, but there was no being alive, no matter how Force-null, who would have been able to stomach living here for more than a few hours. Death hung in the very air.

Even without reaching into the Force to see the past – the last thing Anakin wanted right now – he found himself moving carefully through the hall, stepping around now-empty spaces with the instinctive knowledge of fallen bodies bent around fatal wounds, severed limbs, and discarded weapons. He avoided looking down, knowing that if he did, the corpses of his people would be all that he saw.

If Obi-Wan had noticed Anakin’s meandering path through the main hall, he didn’t comment on it, just followed him silently. Maybe he saw a room full of dead Jedi too.

The feeling faded a little once Anakin made it to the other side of the great hall, but not enough for comfort. He leaned against one of the corridor walls and wept, covering his face with his hands as he shook. Obi-Wan dropped a hand to his shoulder, not saying anything.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can handle,” Anakin admitted. He wanted to take back the words as soon as he had said them, hating the way they echoed in the empty halls.

“Hold onto that feeling,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin raised his head to stare at him, startled into speech. “What?”

Obi-Wan reached towards him, then pulled his hand back as though he had been burned. “Because as long as you can walk through this building and want to burn your own heart to ash rather than spend another moment within its walls, you are still a Jedi.”

“What else would I be?”

Flames danced briefly in Obi-Wan’s eyes, but he didn’t answer, just shook his head and reached out to wipe the tears from Anakin’s cheeks.

Anakin caught his wrist in one hand. “What are you afraid of, Master?” he asked, as gently as he could. It wasn’t a question that he would have – that he _could_ have asked before, because all Obi-Wan would have done was parrot the old Jedi cliché about fear leading to anger leading to hate et cetera, et cetera. Anakin knew fear – and anger and hatred and all the rest, too. But he had spent more than a decade believing that Obi-Wan was above all that, and to see Obi-Wan now so clearly terrified of something he wouldn’t name cut him to the bone.

Obi-Wan sighed. For a moment Anakin thought that he was going to deny any such emotion, then Obi-Wan said quietly, “More things than you can imagine, my old friend.”

“Obi-Wan, don’t keep things from me. Not here.” Anakin couldn’t help glancing back over his shoulder at the empty hall, the Force-echoes tossing him into the vision for just long enough to draw in his breath. Except this time he didn’t see the massacre as it was occurring, but sometime afterwards – two figures, one man-size and the other small as a child, moving among the dead, dwarfed by the enormity of the disaster. Obi-Wan and Yoda. It was gone the instant he blinked. “Please.”

When Obi-Wan didn’t answer, Anakin added, “You’re scaring me,” and saw his friend flinch, his gaze darting downwards to study the chipped, faded marble floor beneath their feet.

For a moment he thought that Obi-Wan was actually going to tell him, but all he said was, “Let’s just get the Ouroboros, shall we?”

Anakin took a step in the direction indicated, then stopped. “Obi-Wan,” he said, “is it dangerous being in here?”

He hadn’t considered that before. He had never thought of the Temple as dangerous, even though there were some sections of it that had been completely blocked off for centuries, others that were forbidden to all but the highest-ranking masters.

Obi-Wan was silent for a moment, thinking. Anakin felt him reach out along the Force, his perception stretching out through the Temple. “There’s no structural damage to the building itself,” he said at last. “And even if there was, I don’t think that anything here would harm either of us. This is still the Jedi Temple, and we still are Jedi.”

Anakin nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. He glanced uneasily back over his shoulder at the main hall, but this time it sat empty to his eyes. He didn’t know whether or not to be relieved.

According to Obi-Wan, the Sith artifacts recovered from Odryn, along with a number of others in the Jedi collections, were kept in a secure vault beneath the northwest spire. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken about twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes, to get there from the main hall.

It took Anakin and Obi-Wan almost twice that. They didn’t have to worry about being stopped by Temple security, sidetracked by awestruck younglings, or called away by urgent news from the front, but the Temple was littered with the Force memories of the massacre. In one corridor, where the door to an astrophysics classroom had been blown open – there were still char-marks on the frame and dents in the opposite wall where the pieces of the door had hit – Anakin walked into what he could only describe as a kind of memory-field. Between one eyeblink and the next he was there, standing frozen in the corridor as a clone trooper planted ribbon charges on the door and then stood back, calling, “Fire in the hole!” in the familiar voice Anakin had heard so many times before.

“No!” he yelled, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t grab the lightsaber on his belt – couldn’t even throw up an arm to protect his face as the door exploded.

He heard the distinctive sound of a dozen lightsabers igniting in the instant before the blasterfire began.

“No!” Anakin shouted, over and over again, as Jedi children cried out and fought and died, as clone troopers flooded into the room, cutting down the Zeltron youngling who darted out from between two clones, dragging an even smaller Feeorin behind her. Anakin threw himself forward against empty air as if he could reach back through the years and fling himself between them and the clones, but all he could do was watch as they were struck by dozens of blaster bolts, their lightsabers falling from tiny hands and deactivating before they hit the marble floor.

Anakin screamed himself hoarse, his voice echoing through the hallways, until there was nothing left but the sound of his sobs. He watched the clone troopers filter out of the classroom – a few less now than they had been, because even Jedi younglings were deadly when they needed to be. They stepped over the smoking bodies of the Zeltron and the Feeorin as if they were so much trash, moving down to the next classroom.

The memory field released Anakin, leaving him kneeling on the floor with his fingers clenched against the faded marble, his cheeks wet with tears and his throat scraped raw from screaming. There were no bodies left, either clones or Jedi. Just memories caught in the agony of the Force, replaying on an eternal loop like a scratched holodisc. They were all so long dead and so long gone that they might have been characters in the Jedi fairy tales that Anakin had told Luke and Leia on the _Falcon_. They would have suffered less if they had been.

At the sound of a muffled sob, he made himself raise his eyes, dragging himself inch by painful inch up off the marble floor. Obi-Wan must have been caught in the memory field as well, slumped against the opposite wall as he wept into his hands. Anakin staggered to his feet, fighting as best he could the dulling misery of the Force that suggested he might be better off joining the rest of his people on their funeral pyres, and stumbled over to his friend. For a moment Obi-Wan resisted him, then something in him seemed to break as he let himself lean against Anakin. They clung to each other, tears wet on their cheeks, until by silent mutual agreement they managed to move far enough down the hallway that they passed out of the area affected by the memory field.

Anakin still felt like death warmed over, but at least he felt less like lying down and waiting to die. He glanced over to see Obi-Wan wiping the tears from his cheeks, his face drawn as tightly as a dead man’s. His gaze flicked sideways towards Anakin, then quickly forward again.

They ran into three more memory fields on the way to the vaults. By the last one, Anakin had gotten the feel for them in the Force, even through the sludge of the Dark Side that hung over everything. He and Obi-Wan were able to detour several hallways around it, just barely skirting an edge that still caught him like a blow to the gut at the phantom pain of a lightsaber slitting his belly. Obi-Wan caught his shoulder and dragged him out as Anakin pressed his hands to his stomach, gasping.

So much death. His whole world, burnt to ash in the space of a day and night, and he didn’t even remember it.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said miserably. He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but they came anyway. “I want –” He choked the end of the sentence off, not knowing how to finish it. _I want to go home_ , but this was his home. _I want Padmé_ , but she was dead. _I want none of this to have ever happened_ , but it had, and even if Anakin could go back to his own time he would bear the scars of this forever.

“I know,” Obi-Wan said quietly. He let go of Anakin and stared at him, his blue eyes huge and grief-stricken. For once, Anakin didn’t see flames reflected in them. His gaze flicked sideways, focusing on a spot just over Anakin’s left shoulder as he said, “It will be over soon.”

“Will it?” Anakin said tiredly, but he touched the hilt of his lightsaber for reassurance and made a wide detour around the memory field that had caught him earlier. It bulged out from the room on the other side of the hallway; the Force told him that two Knights and a half-dozen masterless padawans had been trapped there by a group of stormtroopers accompanied by – who?

He brushed his fingers across his stomach, remembering the phantom pain of his memory. Someone with a lightsaber, but Anakin had been wearing the skin of a Miraluka Knight he only knew by reputation. He hadn’t seen her killer’s face, just felt him in the Force – a half-familiar whirlwind of fierce, all-encompassing rage, deadly determination, and…despair?

That couldn’t be right.

_Who_ are _you?_ Anakin wondered, distracted as he and Obi-Wan made their careful way through the corridors, wary of any more Force traps. They had started slanting downwards some time ago; while Jedi holocrons and other artifacts were stored in the spire itself, Sith and neutral artifacts were kept beneath it, where there was less chance of them affecting the residents of the Temple. Even through the mess that the massacre and the Force together had left of the Temple, Anakin could feel his skin itch with their nearness. He had never been down this deep before; he hadn’t even known these vaults existed, though of course he had heard the rumors. This particular temple had stood for four thousand years; there had been a temple there for a thousand years before the Sith had razed it to the ground in the Sacking of Coruscant during the Great Galactic War. Of course there were rumors. Some of them were probably even true.

By now they were not only below the Temple, but probably also beneath the planetary surface, judging by the familiar closeness of the air and the slight rise in the ambient temperature in the corridors. Some of the climate-control mechanisms had stopped working over the years; Anakin had passed several control panels with their red lights flashing in alarm, while others were dead entirely. Only a handful were still lit green. The lights down here reacted even more sluggishly than those in the main sectors of the Temple, but at least they came on, even if some of them flickered with headache-inducing frequency. Obi-Wan’s glow wasn’t really strong enough to see by and Anakin didn’t think that he ought to ignite a lightsaber in the Temple without a really good reason.

Down here there were fewer doors, most of them blown open. Besides the Sith artifacts, Anakin had no idea what – or whom – had been kept here, but he had the distinct feeling that it probably wasn’t anything good. Whatever it had been, Palpatine and his cronies had wanted it badly enough to go after it with explosives.

_I hate him,_ Anakin thought as they made their way down the corridor, stepping carefully around debris and bits of door. It was hard to tell, but there didn’t seem to be any blaster marks on the floor and walls, and he didn’t have the sick feeling in his chest that signified the last resting place of a murdered Jedi. By the time that the clones had made their way down into the vaults, there hadn’t been any Jedi left to put up a fight. _I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, that lying, murderous piece of –_

“Anakin, it isn’t you,” Obi-Wan said softly, his gaze flicking sideways towards him. “It’s this place. Don’t let it overwhelm you.”

Anakin glared at him. Weariness had settled into his very bones, but he summoned up some outrage anyway. How _dare_ Obi-Wan pretend to know how he felt? How dare he lay judgment on Anakin for feeling what any right-thinking being would feel when confronted by the death of his people – of his _family_ – and the betrayal of a man that he had called friend since he was nine years old? Just because Obi-Wan had shut himself off from the galaxy didn’t mean that Anakin had to. He wanted to burn the galaxy to ash without a care for how many civilians were caught up in the blaze, because they had allowed this atrocity to happen. They hadn’t raised a finger to help the Jedi, who had fought for them, _died_ for them, for twenty-five thousand years –

“ _Anakin!_ ” Obi-Wan caught at his arm, then, after a moment’s hesitation, reached up to brush the backs of his fingers against Anakin’s bare cheek. The skin to skin contact, buzzing with the endless blinding brilliance of the light side of the Force, shocked Anakin back into himself.

He rocked back on his heels, trembling with the aftermath of his unJedi-like rage. Obi-Wan stared at him with alarm and worry, his hand still upraised. “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

Anakin leaned against the nearest wall, trembling. “I – I don’t know,” he said. He dug the heels of his hands into the skin over his eyes, trying to discern whether what had just passed over him had just been him or if it had been caused by the Force. He knew his temper. It could easily have been either.

To cover his distress, he said shakily, “This place never used to be a minefield.”

Obi-Wan lowered his hand slowly. “Yes…a minefield. That’s not a bad way to put it. Though ‘minefield’ implies deliberate intent.”

Anakin shook his head. “How did it come to this?” he murmured, mostly to himself. “How did we come to this?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze dropped, but all he said was, “In this case, I believe that it has less to do with the Temple itself and more to do with that.”

Anakin followed his pointing finger down to the end of the corridor, where it terminated in a dead end. There was no sign of a door or alternate exit, just a blank, undecorated wall, but now that Anakin was focused on it, he could sense the baleful malcontent emanated from it – or from beyond it. “What _is_ that?” he said cautiously, his hand inching towards his lightsaber.

“It’s the vault,” Obi-Wan said. He strode towards it, the hem of his cloak flaring out behind him.

Anakin followed. There were scorch marks on the wall – door? – where someone had tried to blow it open, along with signs of lightsaber and blaster damage, but those were all superficial. When Anakin ran his fingers over them, he found the surface smooth to the touch and almost frictionless. There was hardly any dust.

“Is there another way in?” he asked Obi-Wan, wiping his fingers on the edge of his jacket. They were clean, but he felt sullied by the contact, aware of the Dark Side leaking through. He could just barely sense the Force enhancements built into the surrounding walls; this vault hadn’t been meant to contain Dark Side artifacts for extended periods of time. Twenty years was pushing it.

“This is the only entrance,” Obi-Wan said.

“This is an entrance?” Anakin said doubtfully. “I don’t see a door.”

“There isn’t one, precisely.” He reached out, then stopped just short of contact and looked at Anakin. “Are you sure about this?”

Anakin swallowed, but walking into that room wasn’t going to be the hardest thing he had done today, even if it stank of the Dark Side. “Yes.”

Obi-Wan nodded, his face shadowed. “I’ve never actually been in here before, but I know the principle. Follow me very closely and don’t hesitate.”

“Okay,” Anakin said, eyeing the wall dubiously.

Obi-Wan took a deep breath and turned to face the wall, raising his hands. Anakin felt the Force gather around him, clear and brilliant and cutting through the murk that surrounded the Temple like a beam of sunlight breaking through cloud cover. His blue glow strengthened, filling the corridor with light – and then he stepped forward, through the wall, and vanished.

Anakin swore and followed, resisting the urge to shut his eyes. For a moment his skin buzzed, but aside from that it was no different than taking his fighter through a magnetic shield into a starcruiser hangar bay.

He stepped into darkness that was only broken by Obi-Wan’s faint glow, which wasn’t strong enough for Anakin to see anything. His nerves jangling, Anakin unclipped his lightsaber and ignited it, illuminating the room with pale blue light.

It wasn’t a very large room. It was perfectly round, ringed with lockboxes like the safety deposit chamber of a bank, except that these had no locks that Anakin could see. The only empty space was the wall that he and Obi-Wan had just stepped through. In the center of the room was a single access terminal, its screen powered down.

Anakin stared around, his jaw dropping. “These are all the Odryn artifacts?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Only a dozen or so were recovered from Odryn. The others are from the Temple’s collections. Most of them used to be stored offworld, but it was decided that they were too vulnerable to attack there and the decision was made to bring them to Coruscant until the war had ended.”

“So which one is the Ouroboros in?” He paced nervously around the room, his skin itching at the nearness to the Dark Side on top of the murkiness of the Force spread throughout the Temple.

Obi-Wan put his head to one side, the Force gathering around him as he shut his eyes. He stepped forward, pacing around the room – Anakin stepped back so that he didn’t have to worry about accidentally impaling him – and finally tapped a finger against a small lockbox. It slid silently open and Obi-Wan reached in to withdraw the Ouroboros of Jorl Muungar.

Anakin couldn’t repress an instinctive step backwards at the sight of the thing. It hummed with low-level Force energy, just enough for him to know that it was still viable. The black metal glimmered in the glow from his lightsaber, the serpents’ eyes sparkling malignantly. Obi-Wan frowned at it, then reached inside his cloak and pulled out what looked like a silk scarf. He wrapped it carefully around the Ouroboros, which had the benefit of damping its Force influence enough that Anakin couldn’t sense it anymore.

“Do you want it now?” he asked.

Anakin hesitated, but he didn’t know what would happen if he touched the thing. “No,” he said finally. “You’d better hold onto it. There’s something else I need to do first.”

*

It was a relief to emerge from the corridors beneath the northwest spire into the familiar, open halls of the Temple. Light spilled in through the windows, some of which had been broken years earlier but most of which still retained their elaborate stained glass spectacles. Anakin and Obi-Wan walked in the many-colored reflection of a famous Knight from the last Sith war, a human woman who stood protectively over a hundred children of various species with her green lightsaber drawn.

The Temple felt marginally less oppressive now. Anakin didn’t know if it was merely that they had escaped the Dark Side-haunted vaults or if the Temple itself had recognized the presence of two Knights and relaxed its precautions, but they encountered no other memory fields or other Force traps as they made their way through the corridors.

Obi-Wan’s steps slowed as they neared the main holocomm chamber, which controlled the Temple’s emergency beacon, general communications, and internal security cams. To get there they had to cross a room that had been almost completely gutted, marks of fire still emblazoned on its walls. The cause of the inferno was made clear by the crashed Jedi starfighter in the center of the room, around which Obi-Wan and Anakin edged cautiously.

There was less damage in the main holocomm chamber, though several consoles had been destroyed and there were blaster marks on the wall. The emergency beacon – set to run and hide – still blinked slowly; its power reserves were designed to keep it running for centuries if not destroyed, and even then the signal would bounce to a secondary location and recommence transmitting.

Obi-Wan stopped dead as Anakin descended the steps to the consoles that controlled the internal security scans. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice scratched raw.

Anakin crouched down to determine whether or not the holoprojector still had power. “There is something I must know,” he said, prying off the warped panel that covered the core and pulling out a handful of wires. It took him a moment to splice them together, the console humming loudly as it began powering up again.

“Anakin, if you go into the security recordings, you will only find pain,” Obi-Wan said. He took half a step forward, his hand out as if to stop him.

“I must know the truth, Master,” Anakin said. The security cams had stopped recording years ago, but the last viewed scan was from the day the Jedi Temple had fallen. He keyed it up.

It was the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Anakin recognized the Jedi who backed into the holocam’s recording space – a Master and two Padawans, their lightsabers gleaming as they deflected blaster bolts. Then a fourth lightsaber swung into the hologram, a blue blade that cut the other three Jedi down with only a little effort. The wielder was cloaked but not hooded, dressed as a Jedi, and as he turned Anakin felt his own knees buckle. He hit the tiled floor hard enough that it rattled his teeth, clutching at the console for support.

“It can’t be,” he whispered. “It _can’t_ be.”

A second figure entered the hologram, and the rogue Jedi knelt before him, his blond head upraised to receive the Supreme Chancellor’s beneficent hand. _“You have done well, my new apprentice,”_ he said. _“Now, Lord Vader, go and bring peace to the Empire.”_

Anakin fumbled nervelessly for the controls, somehow managing to turn the holoprojector off. He huddled at the foot of the console, his hands over his ears as if he could drown out what he had heard. He wanted to burn out his own eyes.

He wanted to burn out his own heart.

“No,” he moaned. “No –”

He looked up to see Obi-Wan standing at the top of the steps, staring down at him with a face like a dead man’s, his expression ripped open and raw.

Rage flooded through Anakin. He was on his feet in an instant, bearing down on Obi-Wan with the Force gathered close around him. “You lied to me!”

Obi-Wan just looked at him. “I told you the truth,” he said, “from a certain point of view.”

“You lied to me!” Anakin shouted. “You told me I was dead! You told me Vader betrayed and murdered me!”

For once Obi-Wan met his eyes. No flame burned in them, not this time. “Anakin Skywalker was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force,” he said. “It consumed him. You – the Jedi Knight, my best friend, the good man that I loved – were destroyed. Vader was all that remained. Anakin Skywalker was murdered by the Sith.”

From the entrance to holocomm chamber came the sound of slow clapping. “Fine words from a traitor and a liar,” said the Emperor Palpatine. “But I know the truth. It was the Jedi who betrayed you, and Obi-Wan Kenobi who murdered Anakin Skywalker.”


	6. Duel of the Fates

Anakin’s first thought, absurdly enough, was that Palpatine looked terrible. In the holos that he had seen on the _Millennium Falcon_ , the Emperor merely looked like an old man, stretched thin and tired by time, but in person he looked like a walking corpse. His flesh, all color leached out of it until it was as pale as a fish’s belly, hung in soft folds over the hollows of his cheeks, his white hands hooked nearly into claws. From beneath the shadows of his dark hood, his yellowed eyes glowed like embers. The effect was enough to make Anakin take a step back, disgusted.

He didn’t look like a Sith Lord. He looked like a dead man.

“My boy,” he said. “It’s been too long. Come into the light where I can see you.”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. He put out a hand to stop Anakin, but it was so transparent that Anakin could see Palpatine through the flesh. “No, it can’t be. No –”

Palpatine ignored him. He smiled at Anakin, the same smile he had had so many times before, except this time there was something horrible about it. “Come into the light, my boy.”

When Anakin stepped forward, he passed entirely through Obi-Wan’s outstretched hand without so much as a buzz of the Force along his skin. Palpatine’s smile grew, revealing yellowed teeth. He paced slowly around Anakin, his black robes trailing on the floor. Anakin kept turning, trying to watch him, trying not to flinch as Palpatine walked through Obi-Wan as though he wasn’t there. Maybe for Palpatine, he wasn’t.

“So it is you,” said Palpatine. “I thought it was. It has been a long time, my young friend. A very, very long time.”

“I don’t understand,” Anakin whispered.

“Did you come here to find out the truth, Anakin?” Palpatine asked. “Did you come here to see how the Jedi died? They brought their own deaths on themselves, you know. They betrayed you, as your friend Obi-Wan Kenobi betrayed you.”

“No,” Anakin breathed. “No, that’s not true. You killed them – you betrayed –”

“Me?” Palpatine repeated. “I betrayed no one, my boy. I am the only being who has always been on your side.” He kept moving, and Anakin kept turning to follow him. For a moment he started to reach for his lightsaber, then he stopped himself, both hands dangling uselessly at his sides. “Even Padmé Amidala betrayed you, but I was there. I saved you.”

“No!” Anakin said, his voice overlapping with Obi-Wan’s cry.

“Anakin, he’s lying, you can’t believe him!”

Palpatine gave him a sorrowful look from beneath his hood. “Use your instincts, Anakin. It is true. The Jedi betrayed you. Padmé betrayed you.”

“No,” Anakin said, shaking his head. “No, Padmé would never – Obi-Wan would never –”

“Obi-Wan destroyed you, my boy,” said Palpatine. Anakin’s gaze darted towards Obi-Wan, who stood frozen, his empty hands raised uselessly.

_Yoda sent me to kill his new apprentice,_ he had said back on Dagobah. _I injured him and left him to die – it was a cruel thing to do – I couldn’t kill him, even knowing what he had done._

Anakin had seen holos of Darth Vader back on the _Millennium Falcon_. He had been a monster out of a youngling’s nightmares, a massive figure in black armor that covered him from head to toe. And Obi-Wan had done that to him. To Anakin.

He shook his head, raising his hands to cover his face. “No –” he said. “You’re lying. You’re trying to trick me. You’re a Sith lord!”

Palpatine laid a hand on his shoulder. Anakin flinched at his touch, but Palpatine held on, his grip like durasteel. “And was it the Jedi,” he said, “who told you that was such a bad thing to be?”

“The Sith did _this_!” Anakin cried, sweeping a hand out to encompass the ruin of the Temple. As he did so, his fingertips passed through Obi-Wan’s shoulder. His mind touched on the security holo he had just seen, then skittered away, unable to bear it.

“The Jedi brought their doom on themselves,” said Palpatine. “They rose against the Republic, sought to assassinate the most prominent members of the Senate. It had to be done. They brought it on themselves.”

“Anakin, don’t listen to him,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “You know that’s not true. You know the Jedi would never do that!”

Anakin’s gaze darted towards him, but his mind was reeling. Assassination wasn’t the way of the Jedi – but it had been suggested with increasing frequency as the war bore on. If things had gotten bad enough – if Windu and Yoda had thought that the only way to save the Republic was to act beyond the confines of their legal jurisdiction –

“It isn’t _true_ ,” he insisted, but he heard the doubt in his own voice. “You killed us –”

“The Anakin Skywalker that I knew,” Palpatine said, his eyes glowing gold beneath his hood, “was strong enough to face the truth. The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the galaxy. You must know that, my boy, or you would not have come here.”

Obi-Wan, dead and haunted by the ghosts of his own past. Yoda, half-mad, attacking him in the swamps of the planet he had exiled himself to. Luke, fumbling together his lightsaber with only the most basic rudiments of the Force.

_Beyond hope has Anakin Skywalker fled. Beyond light and hope and fear he is._

“He’s lying,” Obi-Wan breathed, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Anakin, you know he’s lying. He did this to us –”

“No, I – I don’t –” Anakin pressed his hands to his face, bending over slightly. A pit seemed to have opened in his stomach, and in it Anakin found all his fear, all his doubt, all his rage. “It isn’t true! That’s a lie –”

“Why,” said Palpatine, almost kindly, “would I lie?”

“Because you’re Sith! That’s what the Sith do –”

Palpatine went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “But if you won’t believe me,” he said, “perhaps you’ll believe your master Kenobi.”

And he reached out and grabbed Obi-Wan by the throat.

*

For the first time since they had entered the holocomm chamber, Anakin felt the Force tremble. Obi-Wan’s eyes were wide with shock as he clawed at Palpatine’s hand, seemingly unable to break free. His form flickered as he fought Palpatine, the Force fluctuating wildly between the two masters. As Anakin stared, unable to move, he saw Obi-Wan shift from his current form into that of a round-faced youngling, a gawky teenage padawan, a young Knight with freshly shorn hair, an old man with white hair and beard, and every year in between before Palpatine flung him into the far wall as the Master Anakin knew best.

He hit it with an audible crack, sliding down to the floor in a puddle of brown fabric, and didn’t get up again.

Anakin cried out, trying to break away from Palpatine to run to him, but Palpatine’s vice-like grip was too strong for him. He shoved Anakin down to his knees, the Force dropping onto his shoulders like a load of rocks to hold him in place.

Palpatine slid his hands into Anakin’s hair, curving around his skull as he tilted Anakin’s head up towards him. “The Jedi,” he said, “may use the Force, but only the Sith can truly master it.”

“Liar!” Anakin spat, but no matter how hard he fought for the Force, he couldn’t claw his way free of the durasteel grip of Palpatine’s mind. It bore down on him, snaking through his mind in thick, syrupy strands of pure darkness. _Skywalker, you idiot, you should have killed him while you still had a chance –_

In the empty hollow of the room, he could hear the ragged sound of Obi-Wan’s breath.

Anakin threw up his own mental defenses, desperately trying to hold Palpatine off, but somehow Palpatine was already inside his head, ripping his skull open as Anakin screamed. His shields came crashing down, leaving him open to the Force, and Anakin Skywalker burned as Palpatine poured in all the hatred, the fear, the rage, and the desperation of a Jedi Knight who had cut away the best part of himself twenty-two years ago.

_No,_ Anakin begged; he didn’t know if he said the words out loud or not. _No, please, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to_ know –

And then he was somewhere else.

Cascades of lava were thrown up, pattering harmlessly against the shields that protected the mining complex’s landing platform. It was a hellish landscape, rivers of lava that beat against black glass shores, a place that smelled like flame and sulfur and the death of dreams.

But it wasn’t the landscape that caught his eye. Instead, all his attention was focused on the two figures in front of him. Anakin stared, horrified to see himself with his arm upraised, his fist closed on empty air, and Padmé, hovering a few inches up off the ground as she scrabbled at her throat, her eyes bulging.

Dying.

“Let her go, Anakin!”

The words were drawn from his own throat. It was Obi-Wan’s eyes that he was seeing through, Obi-Wan’s memories that Palpatine had ripped from his mind and shoved into Anakin’s. It was Obi-Wan who checked Padmé’s pulse after she fell; Anakin – _Vader_ – who turned away.

It was Obi-Wan who ignited his lightsaber first, but Vader who made the first move.

Distantly, Anakin heard himself screaming, even though Obi-Wan and Vader never spoke. He was aware – not for the first time – of the cool analytics of Obi-Wan’s mind, emotionlessly taking in the bodies strewn throughout the complex as they fought their way off the landing pad and into the building, their lightsabers striking sparks off the walls, smashing into consoles. Vader caught him by the throat and forced him back, their joined lightsabers blazing in the space between them. Anakin looked into his own eyes – not Sith yellow, not yet, but with the coldest expression he had ever seen in his life – and felt Obi-Wan’s despair settle through him, felt the moment that Obi-Wan went from merely trying to wear Vader down enough to talk sense into him to trying to kill him. He kicked Vader aside and they went at each other again, no punches pulled and no holds barred.

It was not Jedi against Sith, light against dark, good against evil – nothing so coldly impersonal. It was Knight against Knight, Master against apprentice, brother against brother, Obi-Wan against Anakin, and both of them wanted nothing more than the other dead. They both thought they were beyond saving.

They fought each other out onto the balcony, onto the collapsing mining operation over a river of lava. Heat kissed their skin, poisonous fumes scorching their lungs, and still they fought, the sound of their lightsabers lost in the roar of the river. They fought as only those who love each other beyond all hope fight, destruction and salvation tangled up together like victory and defeat. Obi-Wan knew, with the bone deep surety of the walking dead, that to kill Vader would be to put his lightsaber through his own heart.

But still they fought.

Even now Obi-Wan felt no fear, just despair so great that he was drowning in it. On the scrap of shielded barge he settled himself, looking across at Vader as he spoke for the first time in what felt like hours. “I have failed you, Anakin. I have failed you.”

The hatred in Vader’s gaze was almost too much for him to bear. Listening to him was like listening to a stranger, his own voice ugly with venom. Anakin wanted to burn the memory from his own mind as soon as he spoke, staring at his own face, lit from within as if his very soul was on fire.

“From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!”

Obi-Wan leaned forward, desperate, searching Vader’s face. _Please,_ he thought, _please let him be there. Don’t let it end like this._

But Obi-Wan’s wild talent was precognition, and Anakin felt it spark inside him, spilling certainty through his body. _How did we come to this?_

Had it been leading to this since Tatooine, when he had shaken the hand of a small boy who had smiled at him with clear, open joy, or Naboo, when the life had come spilling out of Qui-Gon at the hands of the first Sith to appear in a thousand years? Or even earlier, from the instant Obi-Wan had taken up his first lightsaber as a three-year-old youngling, the hilt too big for his small hands?

Had it been leading to this since the universe had come into being, since the Force first breathed life into the void, since the stars spiraled into existence?

Or was nothing certain until the blade was lit and the blow was struck?

The Force showed him an opening and Obi-Wan took it, his boot heels slipping a little in the black glass sand of the bank as he landed. “It’s over, Anakin,” he called, his voice carrying over the roar of the river of lava. “I have the high ground.”

“You underestimate my power,” Vader spat.

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Don’t try it,” he said, but for the first time in years the Force was clear, showing him a future of fire and blood, and what he meant was, _Don’t make me do it._

Anakin hadn’t thought that he had breath left to scream anymore, but it turned out that he was wrong.

The sound of his screams blended together with Vader’s, Obi-Wan’s rage tearing at his throat as he shouted. Even now he took a step forward, starting to stretch his hand out to Vader before he stopped himself. Even now he still loved him.

And Vader hated him, as the flames crawled up the stumps of his legs and ate away his flesh, revealing the pale line of bone before it too began to blacken.

He burned alone as Obi-Wan turned away, catching up his fallen lightsaber in one hand, and Obi-Wan burned alone in his grief.

Anakin was still screaming when he came back to himself on the floor of the Temple, though by now his throat was so raw that his screams sounded more like the yowls of a dying nexu. There were tears on his cheeks, though he half-thought that they should have evaporated in the planet’s heat. His palms felt scorched from the metal of his lightsaber, even though his prosthetic shouldn’t have felt anything.

Palpatine knelt down beside him, stroking a hand over the curve of his skull. “Do you see, my boy? Do you understand now?”

Behind him, Obi-Wan was trying to pick himself up off the floor. His face was bloody, his hands slipping across the tile as he nearly collapsed again. “Get away from him,” he rasped, spitting out blood and a broken tooth.

Palpatine ignored him. “You see now how the Jedi lie. Master Kenobi destroyed Anakin Skywalker and left him to die. Is that the act of a man who loves you?”

Obi-Wan had managed to push himself up to his hands and knees, looking as if he was about to pass out. There was blood smeared on the wall where he had hit it, more of it matted in his hair. “Get away from him.”

Anakin tipped his head back to look at Palpatine. He felt sick, rage and betrayal and despair all tangled up together inside him, grief roughening his throat.

“I am the only one who truly cares about you, Anakin,” Palpatine purred. “Your destiny doesn’t lie with the Jedi. The Jedi are dead. The Sith are the future. You know that.”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “Anakin, no –” He tried to stand up and fell, his bloody hands slipping across the battered floor. So much blood. Anakin didn’t know where it had all come from.

“Join me,” said Palpatine. “I will give you power like you have never seen before. Stand with me and together we can rule the galaxy.”

Anakin’s throat was so raw that he could barely speak. “What makes you think I want any of that?”

“Because I know you, my boy. I know all about the secret desires of your heart, about the dark deeds you don’t dare speak to the Jedi. I know about your marriage to Padmé Amidala. I know what you did to the Sand People who murdered your mother, about what you did to Count Dooku when you had him at your mercy.”

“What?”

Palpatine didn’t seem to hear him. “Even Master Kenobi thinks that you will join me. Why else would he be so afraid? He knows that deep inside, in your heart of hearts, you are no Jedi. You are mine.”

Despite himself, Anakin’s gaze flickered to Obi-Wan, who was frozen on the opposite side of the room. Even beneath the blood, Anakin could see the naked despair on his face. He looked at Anakin, his shoulders drooping, and then down at the floor. He didn’t say anything.

Palpatine curled his fingers beneath Anakin’s chin. “You see? The Jedi never trusted you. They never will – what remains of them. What is there? A dead man, that mad freak Yoda, a half-trained boy? There is nothing left for you there. Your future is with the Sith.”

Anakin ran his tongue over parched lips. “You made a mistake,” he rasped.

Palpatine blinked. “What?”

“You showed me Obi-Wan’s memories, not Vader’s.” It hurt to speak. He’d spent too much time screaming. “Maybe I would have believed him if you had. But you’re wrong. And Obi-Wan is wrong. And I am not him.”

Obi-Wan raised his head, hope sparking in his eyes. Palpatine was right, Anakin realized tiredly. He had thought that history was going to repeat itself.

Anakin pushed himself to his knees, every muscle aching as though he had spent the whole day on the battlefield. In a way he had. 

“My name is Anakin Skywalker,” he said. “I am a Knight of the Republic. And I will live and die a Jedi.”

*

Palpatine stepped back from him, Force lightning glimmering on his fingertips as he raised his hands. Disgust and disappointment chased their way across his face. “Then you will die with the rest of the Jedi,” he spat.

“No!” Obi-Wan shouted.

Anakin felt the Force scream as Palpatine went flying backwards, tumbling into a broken console. Obi-Wan was up on one knee, both hands held out and his face creased in concentration.

Anakin scrambled to his feet, slipping and almost falling before he caught himself. Obi-Wan was still dragging himself upright when Anakin reached him, pulling him to his feet and draping his friend’s arm over his shoulders so that he could support him.

“C’mon,” he gasped, dragging him towards the exit. Palpatine was already beginning to stir.

“Get out,” Obi-Wan insisted. “He can’t kill me twice –”

“Shut up,” Anakin said unceremoniously. He glanced around quickly, trying to remember if there were any secret passages in this part of the Temple. Just another piece of Jedi rumor that happened to be true.

There. It had been partially concealed by the wreckage; Anakin shoved it aside with the Force and pried the panel off with his metal hand. He pushed Obi-Wan inside, then dragged the wreckage back in front of the opening to hide it.

To Anakin’s relief, it wasn’t a crawl space, and a handful of lumas came on as he dragged Obi-Wan down the corridor, trying to remember where it led. To an exit, hopefully, but they were near the top of the Temple’s central spire and it was a long way down to the ground floor or the fighter and speeder bays from here.

“What did he do to you?” he demanded as they ran – or limped, to be more precise. “Are you all right?”

“He pulled me out of the Force,” Obi-Wan said, wincing. “Into flesh. And then he threw me into a wall. Hard.”

“I remember that part,” Anakin said. “He can do that? I thought you were dead.”

“According to Master Yoda, the question is apparently under some debate,” Obi-Wan said. “Anakin, I –”

“Save it,” Anakin said roughly.

“What did he show you?”

Anakin stopped and looked at him. Obi-Wan’s face was pale in the yellow light of the lumas, but despite all the blood, he looked less like a corpse now and more like a living man. He wasn’t glowing any more, either. “Mustafar.”

Obi-Wan turned his face away. “You should not have had to see that.”

“Well, if my counterpart wasn’t such an idiot, you wouldn’t have had to live it,” Anakin said, and then, more gently, “I was in your head, not his. That made it better.”

Obi-Wan didn’t say anything.

“He was insane,” Anakin said.

“You were screaming.”

This time Anakin was the one who looked away. “Wouldn’t you have?”

Obi-Wan didn’t have an answer to that either.

They started moving again, a little more slowly now, both of them wary for any signs of pursuit. If Anakin knew Palpatine – and even if he clearly didn’t know the man as well as he thought he did, he still knew him pretty well – then there would be troops covering the known entrances and exits to the Temple to prevent their escape. Anakin and Obi-Wan could probably fight their way out if they had to, but it would be better if they could slip out unseen, since that would keep the troopers busy for at least a few hours while they searched the massive Temple.

_Unless Palpatine can find us with the Force –_

The murk in the Force was worse than ever; Anakin could barely sense Obi-Wan beside him. But the Dark Side worked differently than the way of the Jedi, so for all he knew Palpatine was causing it deliberately. He had tracked them to the central holocomm chamber, after all.

_No,_ Anakin thought. _This is our place. This is the Jedi Temple, home to the Jedi Order for five thousand years, and no Sith will hunt us here. Not again._

Out loud, he said, “This isn’t going to work.”

“What do you mean?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Palpatine is expecting us to run,” Anakin said. “We need to go to ground – you need medical attention and I need to think. Just for a few hours.”

“He will find us and he will kill us,” Obi-Wan said matter-of-factly. He slumped against the wall as Anakin released him, looking back down the corridor. “And if our survival is dependent on you thinking, then we’re in real trouble.”

“Very funny, old man.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Where’s the last place he’ll look? The vaults?”

“We can’t make it there from here without going back into the main corridors,” Obi-Wan said. He touched his still bleeding lip and looked at it, apparently fascinated by the sight of his own blood, then wiped his fingers clean on his cloak. “The Grand Master’s chambers aren’t far from here. If they haven’t been blocked off, we might be able to hole up there.”

“Sounds great,” Anakin said. He offered Obi-Wan his hand, bracing Obi-Wan as his friend pushed himself laboriously off the wall. “Let’s go.”

“You should, you know,” Obi-Wan said as they recommenced their painful limping down the corridor.

“What?”

“Go.” Obi-Wan coughed, pressing a hand to his battered ribs. Anakin felt the Force curl out from between his fingers, mending the greenstick fractures that were threatening to turn into breaks. Anakin didn’t know if most of the damage had come from being thrown into the wall or being dragged out of the Force. “Take the Ouroboros and go back to your own time. I can take care of myself.”

“To blazes with that,” Anakin said. “You can barely walk right now, or have you forgotten that?”

“Anakin –”

“I said no. I’m not leaving you alone here with Palpatine and his stormtroopers.”

“I am already dead,” Obi-Wan argued. “There is nothing else he can do to me that has not already been done –”

Anakin poked him in the chest with one finger. “You’re not dead right now. I will be damned if I hand over another Jedi for him to torture and murder.”

Obi-Wan looked at him for a long moment, then reached up to wipe some of the blood from his face with the sleeve of his robe. “He wasn’t planning to torture and murder me personally,” he said.

Anakin actually had to turn away and lean his forehead against the wall, because he could still taste the other Anakin Skywalker’s hatred for him. The easiest way to break a Jedi – shown numerous times throughout the war – was to make him do what was anathema to them. It had worked on the other Anakin.

He turned back to Obi-Wan, swiping his hand quickly under his eyes. “I’m not leaving you. And we’re not going to talk about this again, okay?”

“We’re both going to die,” Obi-Wan sighed.

“You are the most pessimistic person I’ve ever met,” Anakin said, shaking his head. “Buck up. When Palpatine resurrected you, he made you twenty years younger.”

“Lovely, because the last twenty years weren’t bad enough the first time.”

Anakin elbowed him, not ungently. “Hey, you got me this time.”

*

Yoda’s chambers had the musty smell of a room that had been shut up for a long time. Opening the door dislodged a cloud of dust that sent them both into sneezing fits as Anakin levered Obi-Wan inside and deposited him on the nearest meditation pad. He turned back to shut the door, setting the lock to engage and the alarm to activate if anyone tried to open it.

As Obi-Wan stripped out of his cloak and tunic, wincing the entire time, Anakin went to peer out through one of the windows, unsurprised to see what looked like an entire battalion of stormtroopers ringing the Temple perimeter. “This should be fun.”

“I’m not sure that’s the word I would choose,” Obi-Wan said.

When Anakin turned back to him, he could see the massive bruise spreading from hip to shoulder where Obi-Wan had hit the wall, disappearing below the top of his pants. Anakin drew in his breath, but Obi-Wan just looked resigned, touching his fingers gingerly to his bare skin.

“How are the ribs?” Anakin asked.

“Not broken anymore. I’d forgotten just how unpleasant this part was.”

“Master of understatement,” Anakin scoffed, and went back to sit down beside him. “Do you need any help?”

“I’m quite capable of licking my own wounds, thank you,” Obi-Wan said. He slumped down with a sigh, kneading the fabric of his tunic between his hands.

Anakin wiped the back of his ungloved hand over his mouth. His throat ached from screaming; he wanted something to drink, but the likelihood of finding water here was – well, it was worth a try. He dragged himself up to his feet and went to poke into the ‘fresher, surprised to find that the plumbing was still working. The Temple wasn’t hooked into the main Galactic City pipes, but was instead self-sustaining, as well as entirely automated, and apparently no one had ever bothered telling the droids that their services were no longer necessary. The water was a little bitter and metallic, but the Force told Anakin that there wasn’t anything in it that would kill him, so he drank his fill, then washed the dust off a second cup and brought it back to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan thanked him absently, most of his attention on healing himself.

Anakin sank down on the other meditation pad and rested his head in his hands. He could still see the other Anakin every time he shut his eyes – a madman or a fanatic with a face like death, already burning with the flames of his conviction even before the fire had taken him in truth.

_I will kill myself before I let myself become that man._

“Why?”

He felt the laser-focus of Obi-Wan’s attention on him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I would give anything to understand why he did it.”

Anakin looked up at him, wondering what Obi-Wan saw when he looked at him. Now he knew who had burned. “How could you think that I’d – that I would ever – that I would do what he did?”

Obi-Wan shut his eyes. “Because I don’t know why he did it,” he said. “You’ve never wanted power, not like that, not like –” He swallowed. “I know that sometimes you struggle with the Dark Side, but it tempts all of us. I never thought –” He looked up at the ceiling. “Back on Dagobah, Yoda suggested that it might be better for the galaxy if you died before we reached Coruscant.”

Anakin’s head snapped up. “ _What?_ ”

“A Jedi who has fallen once may fall again,” Obi-Wan said bitterly. “A Jedi who has fallen once may always fall, and take the galaxy with him into darkness.”

“You thought that I’d –”

“Anakin, I don’t know why he did it!” Obi-Wan’s voice caught on the last syllables. “I loved him, and I killed him, and I still don’t know why!” He put one hand over his mouth, breathing hard, and then added quietly, “Palpatine was right. I did kill him. The body lived on, but I killed Anakin Skywalker.”

“That wasn’t Anakin Skywalker,” Anakin said. Obi-Wan’s gaze flickered towards him, his mouth catching in a frown. “I saw him, Master. He was insane. That wasn’t me, that was – that was someone else.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “It’s kind of you to say, but –”

“He killed Padmé!” Anakin bellowed, then glanced at the door. When stormtroopers didn’t immediately kick it down in response to his shouting, he went on, “I would never, ever hurt Padmé. And he killed her, he –” He choked on the words. “He killed her.”

He flexed his fingers, still feeling the slow thump of her pulse against his nonexistent flesh. She had lived, but not for long, and he was the one who had done that to her. “He was insane,” Anakin repeated, trying to make himself believe it. “He had to have been. Something happened to him to make him like that –”

Obi-Wan just looked at him. “Anakin,” he said, “it would have been easier if he was insane. I am so sorry.”

“Palpatine said – he said something about Count Dooku,” Anakin said, trying to rationalize it to himself. “But I’ve never done anything to Dooku. I mean, yeah, I’ve tried to kill him, but so have you, so has Master Yoda. And he tried to kill me first, anyway.”

Obi-Wan ran a hand over his face, visibly pulling himself together. “You killed him, just before the end of the war. I was unconscious at the time, but Palpatine was there. He must have seen something.”

“But why?” Anakin begged. “I’m a Jedi! Why would I do that?”

“Anakin, I would give anything to know that.”

Anakin put his head back in his hands. He could feel Obi-Wan’s silent misery in the Force, the open wound of his agony like acid against his mind.

“We need a plan,” he said eventually.

Obi-Wan looked up slowly, reaching for his tunic and undershirt. The ugly bruise had already faded to a yellow-green. “You should leave while you still can,” he said.

“I meant an actual plan,” Anakin said.

“Anakin, this is not your fight,” Obi-Wan insisted. He fumbled inside his cloak for a moment, then produced the silk-wrapped Ouroboros and held it out towards him. “Go home. Save the Jedi. Save Padmé. You know what Palpatine is now. You can stop it.”

“I’m a Jedi and he’s a Sith. It is my fight. It’s as simple as that, Obi-Wan. It’s not politics. It’s not fate. It’s not war. It’s just Jedi and Sith. And you know how that ends.”

“Twenty years ago it meant the extinction of the Jedi,” Obi-Wan said. “Anakin, go home. Please.”

Anakin stood up, touching his hand to his lightsaber. “No. Palpatine made a mistake, Obi-Wan. He left us alive. We can kill him. Together. You know we can.”

“Palpatine destroyed five of the greatest duelists in the Order. Even Master Yoda couldn’t defeat him. You and I –”

“Weren’t there,” Anakin insisted. “We’re the best, Obi-Wan. You know that. Together, we can kill him.”

Obi-Wan looked doubtful.

“I talked to Leia and Luke back on the _Falcon_ ,” Anakin said. “Darth Vader –” He swallowed past his repulsion at the name. “Darth Vader is missing. With him gone and Palpatine dead, the Rebel Alliance has a chance. They can restore the Republic. You and I can rebuild the Jedi Order. We _can_ do it, Master.”

“Anakin, why do you think that Vader isn’t here and you are?” Obi-Wan said. “Where do you think he is right now? What he’ll do in your own time?”

Anakin squeezed his eyes shut. “There are thousands of Knights who can deal with him,” he said. “You’re – my Obi-Wan is there, and Yoda and Mace Windu and all the rest. They don’t need me for that.”

“Anakin –”

“No. I told you that I’m not going back. We’re not talking about it anymore, Obi-Wan.” He hesitated, looking at Obi-Wan. “There are thousands of Jedi there, and only two here. We have to do it. You know we can.”

“It’s a fool’s chance,” Obi-Wan said slowly.

“That’s what we do best.” He grinned hopefully at Obi-Wan. “You know he won’t expect it.”

Obi-Wan put the Ouroboros back down, his expression thoughtful. “No, he won’t. And here, in this place – Anakin, he could kill us both.”

“We take that risk every day we draw breath,” Anakin said. “What makes today any different?”

Obi-Wan picked up his lightsaber and stared at it. Anakin watched him, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and almost jumped out of his skin when Obi-Wan ignited his blade. It cast strange blue shadows across the floor and walls as he tilted it, an odd quality to its hum that set Anakin’s teeth on edge. A dead man’s blade, forged from pure Force energy.

“If the last light in this galaxy is to be our funeral pyre, then so be it,” Obi-Wan said. “This time if we burn, we burn together.”

*

His troops had been searching the Temple for hours now, and Skywalker and Kenobi were nowhere to be found.

They were here somewhere, Palpatine knew. He could feel them: Kenobi, the precious golden boy of the Jedi, weaker now clothed in flesh than he had been as pure spirit but still a brilliant white light in the Force, and Skywalker with him, a creature half of flame and half of shadow who blazed like a star in supernova to his senses. It was all that Palpatine had sought to prevent. Without Kenobi’s meddling, he could have had Skywalker at his pleasure, as the boy should have been. And now they were loose in the Jedi Temple, in the very heart of their power.

At least he didn’t have to concern himself with that fool Yoda as well. But Skywalker and Kenobi, together, had always been the most dangerous of the three.

He and his stormtrooper escort made their slow way through the central ziggurat of the Temple. The massacre of the Jedi had left its mark on the Temple, imbued with Force energy after so many millennia of residence, and Palpatine’s senses were clouded in a way that he misliked. Skywalker and Kenobi could have been anywhere in the building, wreaking any kind of havoc that they so desired.

Which was exactly what Palpatine had feared, and exactly what had come to pass. The stormtrooper patrols that he had sent out to bring them to heel – or to bring him their heads – had begun disappearing with increasing frequency a few hours ago, occasionally with garbled reports transmitted over their helmet tightbeams in the seconds before cutting out. Only once had the telltale hiss of a lightsaber been transmitted as well.

The extinction of the clones had been unfortunate. They were familiar with the tactics of the Jedi, as most stormtroopers were not, and after running the last of the Jedi to ground they knew better than to fear them. These stormtroopers had only the old stories of their instructors to brace them against the Empire’s boogeymen, for what little good that seemed to do them. Within these halls they died easy.

“Zeta Team and Lambda Team failed to check in, your excellency,” said one of his stormtrooper escorts. Unease roughened his voice, even through the impersonal modulator of his helmet. “Zeta was in the Halls of Healing, Lambda in the northwest fighter bay. That makes a round dozen squadrons missing, sir.”

Not for the first time, Palpatine lamented Lord Vader’s disappearance. At first he had thought it a fair trade for the chance to have Anakin Skywalker back in hand, but now he saw that that had been a mistake. Vader would have stopped at nothing to bring him the head of Obi-Wan Kenobi, never mind Anakin Skywalker. Instead he was saddled with an entire brigade of incompetent fools.

They entered the main hall of the Jedi Temple. Although the open doors should have been guarded by another stormtrooper squadron, only two figures stood there.

Palpatine’s stormtrooper escort began to raise their rifles. He lifted a hand to stop them. “Make sure that they do not escape,” he ordered.

“Of course, your excellency,” said the nearest stormtrooper. He gestured his men back to take their places behind the relative shelter of the pillars. There were curses at the bodies of their erstwhile comrades were discovered.

“Have you grown tired of hunting easy prey?” Palpatine said, striding forward. “Are stormtroopers not to your liking, Jedi?”

Two lightsabers ignited in near unison, their brilliant blue blades splitting the air.

“I owe you a death, Emperor,” said Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Lightning sparked in the palms of his hands, cool against his skin as he gathered the Dark Side of the Force close about him, counterpoint to the light that clung to the two Jedi. “That death will be yours, Master Kenobi,” said Palpatine. “A more permanent one this time.”

“Please,” said Anakin Skywalker, “try.” He shifted into a fighting stance, Kenobi doing the same.

Even now Palpatine had to admit that they were beautiful to watch, two warriors who knew each other so well that they fought as a single unit, sharing breath and blade amidst the brilliance of the Force. In another life, he might have thought them heroes.

In this life, they were only enemies to be trodden beneath his bootheels.

“So perish the last of the Jedi,” said Darth Sidious, raising his hands. “Die, then, and join the rest of your miserable species.”

*

“This time, we will do it together,” Anakin said.

A smile touched Obi-Wan’s lips as he shifted position slightly, his gaze focused on Palpatine. “I was about to say that.”

Despite the lightning gleaming on Palpatine’s fingertips, the figure of the Sith Lord drew every shadow in the room into himself. Darkness clung to the hems of his cloak, swallowing up the light that fell through the open doors and what remained of the main hall’s stained glass windows. As he moved forward into striking range, he seemed to glide rather than walk, an inhuman movement that made the hair rise on the back of Anakin’s neck. The Dark Side hung about him, malignant as poison, so thick in the air that Anakin could taste it on his tongue with every breath, feel it sticky against his skin like spider web. It sought to trap him, to feed on him and draw the life from him.

_Not here,_ Anakin thought as he and Obi-Wan, without having to look at each other or even speak, began to move apart, circling to flank Palpatine. _Not in this place. In this place, we are the hunters. We will not be prey again._

This might be the charnel house of the Jedi, but there would be no more Jedi dying here today.

Here in the front hall, where the bodies of Jedi and clone troopers had once covered the marble floor, the cloud in the Force that hung over the Temple had lifted. Anakin could see clearly now. In the Force, he and Obi-Wan were one, and they fought as a single warrior split in two might fight. Whatever battles Palpatine had won before, he had not faced them.

Obi-Wan feinted left, pushing into a high, arcing backflip to avoid the bolt of Force lightning that Palpatine sent at him. It crashed into the base of a statue behind him, further blackening its already scorched surface, but Obi-Wan was long out of reach. Anakin was already sweeping in, his lightsaber over his head in a two-handed overhead blow that by all rights ought to have cloven Palpatine’s head from his body. But when he struck the Sith lord wasn’t there; Anakin flicked his blade sideways to absorb the lightning, his wrists straining against the pressure as it forced his lightsaber back towards him.

Palpatine had to break off as Obi-Wan came back in, his blade moving so quickly it was a blue blur obscuring his features. Anakin swept in from behind. Lightning crackled around them, the Force alight as they strove against each other. Anakin and Obi-Wan were the strongest of the Jedi, their powers meshing well so that their strengths compensated for their weaknesses, but Palpatine alone seemed equal to or better than the two of them. For an instant, his blade blazing with lightning, Obi-Wan mirroring him on Palpatine’s other side, and the Sith Lord smiling between them, all Anakin could feel was crushing despair.

_No_ , he thought, trying to push through the misery clouding his mind, _it’s not real_ –

Then Obi-Wan thrust out his free hand, the pure, cleansing light of the Force driving out the darkness, and sent Palpatine flying backwards in a tumble of heavy black robes. Lightning sizzled into nothing.

The stormtroopers opened fire as the two Jedi strode forward. Anakin and Obi-Wan deflected the blasts effortlessly back at the shooters – effortlessly for now, but Anakin was uncomfortably aware of his low his reserves were. It had been a long day. Even at two against one, they couldn’t afford to draw this fight out.

“Stay out of it!” Palpatine spat, rising to his feet, and the few remaining stormtroopers ceased firing.

Palpatine made a sharp gesture; sunlight glinted off the lightsaber hilts that were suddenly in his hands before he ignited them, their scarlet blades splitting the darkness that swirled around him. Anakin glanced quickly at Obi-Wan, whose face was drawn tight in concentration. His intention was clear in the Force as he sprang forward. Red and blue blades flashed together as the two Jedi rushed in, the Sith Lord meeting every blow.

Palpatine was good, Anakin realized to his horror as he took a kick to his chest and turned it into a backflip, Obi-Wan knocking Palpatine’s legs out from beneath him before he was sent flying backwards into a pillar. He was very good – and unlike the two of them, he was relatively fresh. Anakin doubted that the haunting of the Temple weighed on him like it did on the Jedi.

Obi-Wan bounced off the pillar and came back, a wave of Force energy sending Palpatine staggering backwards. Anakin took the opening that left, sweeping in with a two-handed cut that would have opened Palpatine from neck to hip if he hadn’t been able to get his lightsaber blades up in time. They strove against each other, Anakin staring down at Palpatine’s Sith-yellow eyes as their blades burned between them, then Palpatine hooked his feet out from under him and sent him flying back with a crackle of lightning. It knocked Anakin’s lightsaber out of his hand, and he hit a pillar so hard that his head rang, feeling scorched and tender from the lightning.

He started to push himself up, looking around for his lightsaber. Obi-Wan was fighting Palpatine alone now, their lightsabers screaming and the Force singing around them. Anakin scrambled to his feet, searching frantically for his blade, and felt the Force ripple as Palpatine sent Obi-Wan flying. He hit the base of the hall’s one untouched statue and lay still, his lightsaber hilt rattling to the floor beside him.

“No!” Anakin shouted.

He felt Palpatine’s attention settle on him.

The Force rose around him, and for a moment Anakin didn’t understand why. Then the screaming began.

The sunlight was gone. Blasterfire blazed around him, blue and green lightsaber blades trying to parry back the bolts as the Jedi made their last stand. Anakin felt himself stride forward, his lightsaber burning in his fist as he led the 501st Legion – _Vader’s Fist_ , Obi-Wan had named them – into the Jedi Temple. He cut and he killed and as he impaled a Togruta Knight on his blade she spat in his face and screamed, “Traitor!”

Anakin backhanded her and sent her sliding off his blade, and went on killing.

Above him, amidst a barrage of blasterfire, he heard metal began to crack. A low rumble shivered the floor beneath his feet. _This isn’t right, this isn’t part of the vision –_

Force energy sent him tumbling clear as the upraised lightsaber of the long-dead Grand Master came crashing down, barely missing Palpatine as the Sith lord dove out of the way. The last threads of the vision slid away and Anakin hit the ground in a controlled roll, coming up on one knee and still looking frantically around for his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan was on his feet again, looking battered but determined. “Anakin!” he shouted, then drew back his arm and threw something at him.

Anakin caught it left-handed. It was Obi-Wan’s lightsaber hilt, something rattling loosely around the narrow spot just beneath the blade emitter. Force energy sparked as it brushed Anakin’s bare fingers.

The Ouroboros.

“No!” Anakin screamed. “Obi-Wan, no!”

The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was his own lightsaber blazing blue in Obi-Wan’s hands as Palpatine advanced on him.


	7. Knightfall

_Coruscant  
8 weeks after the Battle of Odryn_

Before the war, the sight of a Jedi Knight in the halls of the Senate Building would have raised no eyebrows; now, three years into it, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s appearance garnered a few slanted looks, senators, representatives, and their retinues all trying to judge his purpose here. Except for the few he knew, whom he acknowledged with a quick tilt of his chin and an absent smile, he ignored them all, moving unhurriedly down the curving corridors towards his destination. He was late, but a Jedi running would have caused an immediate stampede in the opposite direction, his audience assuming that some imminent disaster was about to befall the Senate. Obi-Wan smiled not because of any inherent confidence, but because to show anything less than absolute poise would lead to questions about what led such a famous, skilled Jedi Master like Obi-Wan Kenobi to frown so deeply, and if Obi-Wan had let his mask slip for just a moment, then there really would be a stampede.

The two Red Guards standing outside the doors to the Executive Suite recognized him and let him pass without challenge. Obi-Wan strode inside, tugging absently at the front of his tunic to make sure it sat straight before crossing the antechamber – never empty, and currently occupied by another pair of guards and the usual assortment of petitioners, who watched his progress with expressions that ranged from disapproving to jealous. The inner doors slid open as Obi-Wan approached, admitting him into the Supreme Chancellor’s office.

“My apologies for my tardiness, your excellency, masters,” he said; Palpatine was sitting behind his desk as usual, while Yoda and Mace Windu were present via hologram. “I was delayed at the shipyards.”

“Everything is in order, I hope?” Palpatine asked, looking apprehensive. “Should we be concerned?”

“Not at all, your excellency,” Obi-Wan said. “It was a minor matter that required an external adjudicator.” Which was vastly oversimplifying an argument that had nearly turned to blows between a navy and army quartermaster over supplies that had been meant for the clones but appropriated for their transport instead, but neither Palpatine nor the two other Jedi needed to do that.

Since Yoda and Windu were still standing, he didn’t take the seat that Palpatine indicated, just settled himself into a more comfortable stance, folding his hands inside the long sleeves of his cloak.

“What a relief,” Palpatine said, relaxing back into his chair with a sigh. “I was concerned that it might have been another incident like the virus that affected our communications last year.”

“Nothing so dire, your excellency,” Obi-Wan said. He glanced at Yoda and Windu, who were currently deployed to opposite sides of the Outer Rim. The fact that Yoda himself had been forced to leave Coruscant and the Jedi Temple was a sign of how quickly the war had turned from merely challenging to truly dire within the past seven weeks. Windu, who was so far distant that his hologram was more static than picture, was even further afield. Obi-Wan himself was currently the only Council member onplanet and he had just returned a few hours earlier; he expected that he would be deployed again before the week was out. Perhaps sooner than that if his presence here was any hint.

He looked inquisitively between the Chancellor and the two other Jedi. Yoda spoke first, his voice crackling over the distance. _“Well, you are, Master Kenobi?”_

“As well as can be, Master,” Obi-Wan said. Even without being present in person, Yoda was strong enough to sense some of his emotions with nothing but a visual fix. To him Obi-Wan’s mind must have been screaming distress, because he gave him a look that in Obi-Wan’s experience varied in meaning from “eat more, you should” to “on a six-week meditative retreat go, you should.” In this case, it was probably both.

_“Your troops?”_ Windu asked.

“Three-quarters strength, Master,” Obi-Wan said. “We didn’t take many losses on Muunilinst. We can deploy again in an hour if need be.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Palpatine said quickly. “I think there’s at least enough time for you to have dinner and a good night’s sleep.”

The latter was unlikely, but Obi-Wan smiled politely anyway. “Do we have an assignment, your excellency?”

“Have you heard of the planet Mustafar, Master Kenobi?”

For no reason that he could think of, Obi-Wan’s throat clenched. A small glass figurine on an end table in one corner of the room picked itself up and smashed against the wall, making Obi-Wan and Palpatine both jump and stare at it.

“I –” Obi-Wan began, conscious of the ripples of the Force that meant he had caused it. Most Jedi younglings – and even a few padawans – were prone to uncontrolled bursts of Force energy in times of great emotion, but as a Master Obi-Wan should have been years beyond that.

“Blasted air traffic,” Palpatine said, waving a hand at the huge transparisteel window behind him. “Some of those transport speeders are so large that they make everything in a kilometer shake when they rattle by. This is hardly the first piece I’ve lost.”

Despite Yoda’s disapproving frown – and grateful, at the moment, that the Windu’s reception was so bad that Obi-Wan could barely tell he had a head, let alone an expression on it – Obi-Wan felt his shoulders relax. Even the non-Jedi who were familiar with the Force were seldom eager to ascribe it to events that could be explained by more conventional means.

“I’ll have a droid clean it up before my next visitor,” Palpatine said, misinterpreting Obi-Wan’s glass at the small pile of shattered blue glass. He remembered seeing the figurine before; an anthropomorphic representation of Peace. Quite aside from Obi-Wan’s control or lack thereof, its destruction wasn’t a good omen. “Mustafar, Master Kenobi?”

“Ah – excuse me, Chancellor. It’s a Rimworld in Separatist space that’s controlled by the Techno Union, though I believe several other corporations also own property there. The entire planet is highly volcanic and almost uninhabitable, though there are mines that operate in regulated conditions under tight shielding. I can’t remember what kind of minerals the planet produces –”

“That isn’t important,” Palpatine said. “I have a contact in the Techno Union – an old friend from my days as a senator, I’m afraid I can’t reveal his name, I’m sure you understand –”

Obi-Wan made a slight, dismissive gesture. It wouldn’t be the first time. That was the problem with a civil war; everyone had friends, and in some cases family, on both sides. Satine and Bo-Katan, back on Mandalore, had been evidence of that. As the world outside the Order thought of such things, even Count Dooku might have been considered Obi-Wan’s adopted grandfather or uncle, even though there was no blood relationship binding them.

Palpatine inclined his head in acknowledgment of the dismissal. “My contact tells me that Count Dooku is using their facility on Mustafar to construct a massive new weapon, one that would turn the tide of the war for the Separatists. According to him, it would give them the ability to destroy an entire planet at once.”

“An entire planet?” Obi-Wan said, his eyebrows arching in surprise. “Surely that isn’t possible.”

“My contact seems quite certain of it, General Kenobi. Certain enough to risk his life contacting me.” There was a hint of reproach in Palpatine’s voice. “The potential loss of life was too great for him to stomach.”

In Obi-Wan’s experience, most members of the Techno Union didn’t give a damn about potential loss of life, but he supposed that an individual might be concerned about a loss of customers. He stroked a hand over his beard, thoughtful. “Despite their ties with the Confederacy, the Techno Union is technically a neutral party,” he said. “Republic military action on one of their holdings could draw repercussion from the Council of Neutral Systems.”

“I think that you and I are both aware that the Council has no real power anymore,” Palpatine said. “The assassination of the Duchess of Mandalore deprived them of their greatest advocate. All they can do is bluster, and not much of that these days.”

Obi-Wan managed to control his automatic flinch at the casual mention of Satine, but the Supreme Chancellor gave him a speculative look anyway. Someone must have informed him of the tragic circumstances of Satine’s death. If Obi-Wan ever found out who –

_“Afford to ignore this threat, we cannot,”_ said Yoda. _“Too great the danger is.”_

“I agree, Master,” Obi-Wan said, his heart sinking. He had counted on having at least a day’s furlough to dig through the Order’s records on the old Sith Wars, but now it looked like he wouldn’t even have that.

_“Obi-Wan,”_ said Windu, his hologram stabilizing long enough for Obi-Wan to make out the tight line of concern drawn between his brows, _“take the_ Resolute _to Mustafar. Your orders are to secure the planet by any means necessary.”_

“I will deal with the Techno Union if it is required,” said Palpatine.

“One star destroyer isn’t much of a planetary invasion force,” Obi-Wan said cautiously, but he knew what was coming even before Windu said, _“Unfortunately, the_ Resolute _is the only ship available until_ Coruscant Sky _comes out of spacedock. If it becomes necessary to call for reinforcements, Plo Koon may be able to spare a ship or two from the siege at Bespin.”_

Obi-Wan bowed slightly. “Understood, Master. I’ll inform Admiral Yularen and my clone troopers.”

_“Very well.”_ There was what sounded like a muffled explosion in the background and the hologram blurred even further as Windu glanced over his shoulder. _“I’m needed. Your excellency, Yoda, Obi-Wan –”_

“Good luck, General Windu,” said Palpatine.

“May the Force be with you,” Obi-Wan said.

_“And with you, Obi-Wan.”_ Windu’s hologram winked out. Yoda hesitated a moment longer, frowning at Obi-Wan, but then he was called away too, leaving Obi-Wan alone in the room with the Supreme Chancellor.

Palpatine stood up and walked over to stare out the floor to ceiling window at the city beneath them. His somber, worried face was reflected back in the transparisteel. “Have you heard anything?”

Obi-Wan shook his head, realized that Palpatine probably couldn’t see him, and said, “Not a peep, your excellency, and I’ve passed the word to every contact I can. If Anakin is alive –” His voice caught briefly and he swallowed before continuing. “If Anakin is alive, no one is speaking to me about it.”

Palpatine clasped his hands behind his back. “But you do believe that he still lives?”

“I do, yes,” Obi-Wan said, then, at the Supreme Chancellor’s gesture of invitation, dropped into one of the empty chairs. He ran one hand through his hair, bone-deep exhaustion settling through him as he resisted the urge to go to sleep right then and there. They’d been two standard days getting back from Muunilinst, which should have at least given him time to rest, but he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since Odryn. He had spent most of their transit in the infirmary, helping heal injured clone troopers. Healing, never his forte, always left him feeling raw and rather abused, but it was a necessity that no one but a Jedi could provide.

“It’s a pity that the Council can’t spare you for a few weeks,” Palpatine said.

Obi-Wan glanced up at him, frowning. He agreed, but he knew better than to say as much, even in private. “To be honest, your excellency, I wouldn’t know where to start. And we can’t spare any Knights on personal vendettas right now.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a personal vendetta,” Palpatine said. He turned back to Obi-Wan, his gaze sweeping him up and down.

Obi-Wan straightened his back, feeling an icy chill run down his spine at Palpatine’s speculative expression. The Supreme Chancellor had other friends among the Jedi, but Anakin had always been his favorite, and Anakin’s popularity in the Order meant that he had always had some juicy piece of gossip to share with the Chancellor. It was never anything harmful – Anakin wasn’t that stupid – but Palpatine had to be looking for someone to fill his place. With Ahsoka gone, Obi-Wan was the most likely Jedi to satisfy his tastes. It wasn’t a position that Obi-Wan had any interest in filling.

“I’m afraid that the Council – and I – would have to disagree, Chancellor,” he said cautiously. “To me it feels very personal. The Council would never agree to let me go alone to search for him.”

“But you and I both know that you wouldn’t trust anyone else to do so, would you, Obi-Wan?” Palpatine said. He smiled gently at Obi-Wan. “Just as Anakin didn’t trust anyone else during that dreadful affair last year.”

Obi-Wan took the hit, glancing down at the richly carpeted floor. “Anyway, the matter’s immaterial,” he said. “The Council declared him killed in action on Odryn.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised him, until he realized that it was the first time he had said the words aloud.

Palpatine was watching him curiously. “But it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Obi-Wan stood up. “Unlike Anakin, I am on the Council. Yoda and Mace wouldn’t lie to me about that if they had any reason to think that Anakin was still alive.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Master Kenobi,” Palpatine said, gently enough that Obi-Wan winced, regretting his overreaction. At least Windu and Yoda hadn’t witnessed it. “I just meant that the Jedi have been known to keep secrets even from their own if it’s deemed important enough. But of course Anakin’s disappearance and your apparent murder last year are very different circumstances.”

Obi-Wan rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, your excellency. I’ve been a little on edge these past few months.”

Palpatine came around the edge of his desk to clap him on the shoulder. “I shouldn’t have pressed the matter,” he said. “It’s a pity that you’ll have so little furlough this time – you’ll be leaving in the morning, I assume?”

“First thing, as long as the _Resolute_ checks out,” Obi-Wan said. “Hopefully your contact was mistaken and this is nothing but a false alarm.”

“We can only hope, my friend,” Palpatine said.

Obi-Wan took the dismissal and made his way towards the doors. He was reaching to open them when Palpatine said, “One more thing –”

“Your excellency?” Obi-Wan said, turning back.

“Have you learned anything about this new lieutenant of Count Dooku’s, this Darth Vader?”

“No,” Obi-Wan said. “We haven’t.”

He commed Yularen while he was on his way out of the Senate Building, relieved to find that the admiral was still at the shipyards. Yularen’s response to the news that they weren’t even going to get twenty-four hours leave was a weary sigh, but no real surprise. Republic forces had been stretched nearly to the breaking point since Odryn; this was the first time they had been back on Coruscant since Obi-Wan had given his initial report to the Council two months ago.

_“No, General, there’s no need for you to return,”_ Yularen said. _“We have it well in hand. I’ll see you in the morning.”_

“Very well,” Obi-Wan said. “Let me know if there’s anything I need to arrange before we depart.” He signed off, glancing down at the woman who had joined him as he made his way down the corridor.

Padmé Amidala smiled tiredly at him. “I heard you were back.”

“Word travels fast,” Obi-Wan said wryly. “We only made planetfall an hour or so ago.”

“I bribed a warrant officer at the shipyards to tell me when the _Resolute_ returned,” Padmé said frankly.

Obi-Wan turned towards her in surprise. “I don’t have any news, Senator –” he began.

She laid a hand on his arm. “It isn’t about Ani,” she said, her voice catching on his name. “Though of course I was hoping –”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “As I just told the Chancellor, there hasn’t been any news. The Council officially declared him killed in action last week.”

Padmé’s mouth trembled for a moment, but even though her eyes shone, she didn’t weep. “I heard,” she said, and Obi-Wan knew, with the bone-deep certainty of the Force, that she had spent every night since crying herself to sleep.

“Padmé,” he said gently. “There is still hope.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“You know that I do.”

She nodded, pulling herself together. “I need to talk to you,” she said, and as Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, went on, “In private. Some place that we won’t be overheard.”

“Your apartments –”

“Not there.” Her voice was firm. “Do you know somewhere?”

Obi-Wan frowned. “Merely overheard, or recognized as well?”

“Both, if it’s possible.” He could sense her relief at his easy acquiescence, and her own worry tangled up in it. No, it didn’t have anything to do with Anakin, although for some reason Obi-Wan sensed a connection, which was probably just his exhaustion talking.

“I know a place,” he said. “I need to check in with my troopers – we’re being deployed again in the morning – and then change into fresh clothes, preferably something that doesn’t scream ‘Jedi.’ Do you know the Loaded Dog, in the Senate District?” She nodded. “Wear something inconspicuous. I’ll meet you there in two –” He glanced at his chrono and winced. “Better make it three hours.”

“We’ll be recognized,” Padmé said worriedly; the cantina was favored by junior Senate staff, and both she and Obi-Wan were fairly notorious.

“We won’t be staying long,” Obi-Wan said, sweeping a hand through his hair. “That’s not too long, is it? If it can’t wait, you can come back to the Temple with me, but –”

“People will talk,” Padmé finished for him.

People would talk. Even half-empty as the Temple was, resident Jedi and staff would recognize Anakin Skywalker’s paramour going into his partner’s private chambers, and by morning that rumor would be all over Coruscant. It wouldn’t do anything for Padmé’s reputation. _Anakin wouldn’t thank me for that._

Of course, Obi-Wan wasn’t supposed to know that there was anything going on between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala, but the only person who really thought that their affair was a secret was Anakin himself. He also probably thought that he was the only Jedi in the Order who had a lover outside it – or inside it, for that matter. Or he had thought so, anyway.

“It can wait,” Padmé said. “Thank you, Obi-Wan. You – I didn’t know who else to go to.”

Obi-Wan looked at her with concern. “Padmé, we’ve been friends since we were barely out of childhood –” Though neither of them had ever really been children then; she had been a wartorn Naboo’s teenaged queen and Obi-Wan a padawan on the verge of being thrust into Knighthood. “You can always come to me.”

“You weren’t here,” Padmé said simply. She leaned up to kiss his cheek; Obi-Wan caught the floral scent of her hair, as well as the speculative look of the senator from Corellia, who was watching them.

“I’ll see you, then,” Obi-Wan said, gently disentangling himself.

She nodded, stepping back. “Obi-Wan,” she added suddenly, “you would tell me, wouldn’t you? If you had heard anything?”

“If – and when – I hear something, I will tell you first,” Obi-Wan promised. “I give you my word.”

Her hand lingered on his arm for an instant before she released him. “Thank you,” she said, then turned and walked away with long, unhurried strides, her head high and her back very straight.

Obi-Wan watched her for a moment, then continued on towards the turbolifts, his mind already full of all the things he had to do before they deployed again in the morning. Cody and Rex had to be told, as well as the battalion quartermasters; the last thing they needed was to arrive on Mustafar and realize that they were short of ammunition. The clones would take the news of the fresh deployment in stride, the way they always did; it would be their fourth straight in the past two months, without any furlough or fresh recruits. The only reason that Obi-Wan’s battalion was at three-quarter strength instead of less than half that was because he had been able to fold Anakin’s 501st Legion into his own command rather than permitting them to be reassigned to another general.

He glanced at his chrono again. If he hurried, he might have time to copy some of the holodiscs in the Archives to study on the way to Mustafar.

*

The cantina Obi-Wan had instructed her to meet him was warm, packed with too many bodies for comfort. Padmé sipped dutifully at her heavily watered Corellian brandy, the ice cubes clinking against her teeth as she surveyed the room for what felt like the tenth time. All around her, beings laughed and drank and flirted, placing bets on the swoop races broadcast on the screens ringing the room or pulling each other aside for side deals that had nothing to do with sport. Padmé recognized half a dozen members of various senatorial retinues, which meant there were probably at least another dozen here that she didn’t know on sight. Aside from her, there was no one in the room ranked higher than junior representative, which at least lowered the chances of her being recognized slightly, but every minute that ticked by made her more nervous. It wasn’t like Obi-Wan to be late.

A light touch on her elbow made her turn, raising her glass like a charm to ward off unwanted propositions. “Sorry, I’m with someone –” she began, roughening her voice to something closer to Anakin’s Tatooine-accented Basic.

Light blue eyes grinned at her out of a familiar face now dominated by the yellow tattoos of a Kiffar, incongruous but unmistakable beneath the neatly trimmed beard. Padmé was so shocked that all she could do was stare at Obi-Wan, who looked nothing like a Jedi, dressed as he was in a sleeveless black vest and matching leather pants, displaying another Kiffar tattoo on his left bicep. A pair of thigh-holsters held blasters that looked extremely well-used. If he was carrying his lightsaber, Padmé had no idea where he had put it, since she couldn’t spot any likely hiding places.

Her mouth went a little dry.

Obi-Wan ruined it by taking the glass of Corellian brandy out of her hand and draining it, crunching an ice cube between his teeth as he set it down on the counter. He took Padmé’s elbow and steered her towards the back of the cantina. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t sound anything like the posh Coruscanti Jedi she was used to, either.

Feeling rather dazed, she followed him out through a door behind the bar, both of them pressing against the wall to allow a pair of giggling Mon Cal girls coming out of the ‘fresher to pass by. They went up a set of narrow stairs; Padmé was about to ask where they were going, but Obi-Wan tipped a finger against his lips and she held her tongue. They kept climbing, until Padmé’s legs were screaming protest and she was wishing that she hadn’t missed her last three sessions at the gym in order to try and keep up with the endless barrage of reports for her Senate committees.

They finally emerged onto an external landing that connected this building with another tower via one of Coruscant’s numerous pedestrian walkways. Obi-Wan led her across it, his gaze flicking ceaselessly from side to side, up and down, taking in the other city-goers that passed them and the speeders zooming by. Once they had reached the opposite building, he held the door for her, then led her down another two flights of stairs before exiting onto a sky platform where several hovercabs were loitering. Obi-Wan picked the first one, which had an Aqualish driver rather than a droid, and helped Padmé in before giving the driver their destination.

She folded her hands in her lap, looking across the cab at his handsome face, and thought, _I hope I’m not overreacting._

Sitting with his back to the driver, he had relaxed his mask slightly, so that for an instant his exhaustion shone through. She was less than a decade younger than him – he had been right to say that they had come out childhood together – but at the moment he looked much older, as though every year of the war had added ten years to his life. He didn’t look like he had been sleeping, either.

Padmé felt a flash of shame, knowing that she should have found another way. There had to have been something that she could have done instead of running to the Jedi for help.

“I don’t mind,” Obi-Wan said, still using the sing-song Kiffar accent. Listening to him made Padmé’s head hurt; he just sounded wrong, though she doubted that anyone who wasn’t familiar with his own voice would notice. “To be honest, it makes a welcome change of pace.”

“You sound like you’re reading my mind.”

“I would never,” he said, looking honestly hurt.

It was an unwelcome reminder that he, like Anakin, was perfectly capable of doing so if the desire took him. After what she had seen on Naboo and Geonosis, it was impossible for Padmé to forget that he was one of, if not _the_ (a private conviction that she wouldn’t dream of voicing to Anakin) most dangerous men in the galaxy. The more arcane abilities of the Jedi were something else entirely. Though there were plenty of holodramas about the Jedi, most of them were so absurd that it seemed ridiculous to believe that they had any but the most fragile basis in reality. It was, no doubt, the kind of illusion that the Jedi preferred. Despite the fact that they were fighting – and dying – to keep the Republic alive, the Senate would undoubtedly go into collective hysterics if they ever realized just how dangerous the Jedi really were.

Some of this must have showed on her face, because Obi-Wan said gently, “You are safe with me, Padmé,” as though for an instant she had thought otherwise.

“I know,” she said, and then tried to relax, asking, “Where are we going?”

“Dinner, of course,” he said, arching an eyebrow at her amused expression. “I hope you’re hungry.”

They landed outside a surprisingly dingy-looking diner whose red neon sign blinked slowly in the window. Obi-Wan paid the driver, then handed Padmé out and led her into the diner. A bell over the door dinged as they entered.

The handful of patrons – a family of Aleena, two tired-looking Twi’lek showgirls, and a Gamorrean in laborer’s clothes – barely stirred. A WA-7 service droid rolled up to them and said brightly, “Welcome to Dex’s Diner! Table for two?”

“Actually, we’d like a booth,” Obi-Wan said in his sing-song Kiffar accent. “We’ll both be having the gartro omelet special.”

The droid didn’t bat an eye. “Of course, honey. Come on back.”

She led them over to a booth in the back. Obi-Wan took the side that gave him the best view of the door, while Padmé slid into the seat across from him, taking the menu that the droid handed her.

“I’ll get you some jawa juice, hon,” said the droid, rolling off. “And that special.”

“Most of the food is quite good,” Obi-Wan said, glancing at his menu. “Just don’t try any of the stews.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t want to know,” he said, and grinned. It transformed his face, making him look ten years younger, for an instant a ghost of the boy she had first met all those years ago on Naboo.

Padmé raised her eyebrows at this. She was waiting for an indication that it was safe to talk, but Obi-Wan seemed content to browse his menu. When the droid came back with their cups of jawa juice, she waited for them to order, then said, “Sorry, hon, that omelet’s gonna take an hour or so. We’re out of eggs.”

“That’s quite all right, thank you, Flo,” Obi-Wan said calmly. “I’ve got the time.”

“Omelet?” Padmé said after the droid had zipped off a second time. “What’s that about?”

“Oh,” Obi-Wan said vaguely, “you’ll see.” He sipped at his steaming jawa juice, then all at once his gaze went sharp and he said, “Now. What is it that you wanted to speak to me about?”

Padmé turned her own mug in quarter-circle with a finger on the rim. “It’s possible I’m overreacting,” she allowed. “All of this –”

“I needed to come here anyway,” Obi-Wan said calmly. “Besides, like I said, you can always come to me. And we are here already, after all.”

Padmé made herself smile. “I guess it is a little late for second-guessing.”

“Indeed. Besides, you know that if you don’t tell me I’ll just have to ferret it out on my own.”

Which Padmé knew he was fully capable of doing. She sighed, took a sip of her jawa juice, and said, “I think I’m being followed.”

Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed. “I know that the Supreme Chancellor keeps certain senators under surveillance –”

“No, it’s not that,” Padmé said; she saw his mouth tighten and realized that she had as good as told him that Palpatine was having her watched. “It’s something else. Something new.”

“Tell me from the beginning,” Obi-Wan said firmly.

Padmé licked her lips, thinking, and finally said, “It started about two months ago.”

“After Odryn?”

“About a week after you – told me.” She could still remember that moment. Threepio had come to tell her that a Jedi had arrived at her apartments; she had hurried out, expecting to see Anakin waiting for her on the verandah. Instead she had found Obi-Wan, still filthy from his last battle and with a face like a dead man’s. She had known what he was going to say even before he had spoken.

Obi-Wan reached out to cover her hand with his own, squeezing for a moment before he released her. “Go on.”

Padmé took a moment to compose her thoughts. “I started feeling like I was being watched,” she said. “As though there was someone there, just out of sight. Not just in the Senate, or in public –” For a moment she smiled. “I have contacts too. At first it was just I thought it was just the surveillance team, who I’m not supposed to know about, of course, but then I started to get that feeling in my apartments, too. I increased my security and swept my apartment for bugs.”

“Did you find any?”

“Just the usual ones.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows arched up slightly. He held up a hand to silence her as the droid came back, setting their plates in front of them and pouring them both fresh cups of jawa juice. Only after the WA-7 had left them did he indicate that it was all right for her to go on.

“I thought I was imagining things,” Padmé admitted. “I hadn’t been sleeping well, it could have been just –”

“I understand,” Obi-Wan said, and from the expression on his face – clear even with the unfamiliar Kiffar tattoos – he understood only too well. Anakin’s disappearance had left holes in both of them, and for all that Padmé loved her husband, he had been a part of Obi-Wan’s life for far longer than he had been in hers. _Without him, we’re both broken._

She ate one of her potstickers, hoping that Obi-Wan hadn’t sensed the thought but suspecting he had. “Then the gifts started showing up.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze sharpened. “Gifts?”

“In my office at the Senate Building, at first, then in my apartments. My security team hasn’t been able to work out how anyone was able to get inside. There was no sign of a breach.”

“When was this?”

“The first one appeared five weeks ago.” Anticipating his next question, she said, “Flowers. Night-blooming glass roses from Naboo.” Despite the name, they weren’t actually constructed from glass; instead, their petals lacked any pigment at all, making them look as though they had been constructed rather than grown. “They’re my favorite. It’s not a secret, but – and then more flowers. Jewelry. Other things – personal things. The sort of things that no one should know except –”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said softly.

Padmé stared down at her plate, appetite suddenly gone. “Yes. But how is that possible? Anakin’s de – gone.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze slipped sideways, shadowed. “When did the gifts arrive? Do you remember the exact days?”

“Yes, of course.” His eyes narrowed as she told him; she could practically see the wheels turning. “Why? Do you know something?”

“No,” he said, picking up his fork again. “Just – it’s odd.”

“What is?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Obi-Wan said. “I have to check something when I get back to the Temple. Senator – Padmé, do you feel threatened? Do you feel as if you’re in danger?”

She met his gaze. “Two weeks ago I sent one of my decoys back to Naboo, in advance of a meeting I had with the Queen. The ship was attacked – supposedly by pirates, but when the nearest Republic patrols reached it, they found everyone onboard dead. Moteé had been choked to death.” She touched a hand to her own throat, swallowing. “Most of the others were killed by blasters, but I saw the report, and some of the wounds might have – might have been made by a lightsaber.”

Obi-Wan drew in his breath, his eyes widening, but all he said was, “That’s worrying.”

“So, yes, I feel threatened,” Padmé said. “All the official reports said that I was on that ship. I was going to follow a few days later, but after the attack I cancelled it. I attended the meeting via holoconference.”

“That was wise,” Obi-Wan said softly.

“Queen Jamillia insisted.” She caught her lip between her teeth, anger overtaking her briefly. “I hadn’t thought that there was any real danger. There haven’t been any threats –”

“Padmé, you couldn’t have known. And imagine if you had been there –”

“I have. Often.” She took a deep breath. “Obi-Wan, is there any way – any way at all – that Anakin could have been captured by the Separatists on Odryn and – and been brainwashed into serving them? Maybe the gifts and the – the surveillance – are his way of reaching out, because he’s forbidden to contact the Jedi. After all, he has to know that I’d come to you eventually.”

Obi-Wan took a deep breath, then let it out all at once, shutting his eyes. When he opened them again, they were clear and blue and infinitely sad. “You’re not the only one who’s being stalked, Padmé,” he said. “That possibility has been concerning me for some time now.”

*

Padmé’s breath caught in her throat. “You’re serious,” she whispered.

“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s not – it isn’t a popular theory among the Jedi Council. If it was, they wouldn’t have declared Anakin killed in action.” He swallowed, glancing down. “And I can’t help but think that if Count Dooku – or someone else – had managed to – to turn Anakin, then he would have made a bigger spectacle out of it. Anakin’s very famous. Parading him on the HoloNet would be a major coup.”

He was right, of course, but all Padmé could think of was Anakin trapped in his own skin, doing awful things and aware of it every second of every hour of every day. She couldn’t imagine any fate worse for a Jedi.

From his expression, neither could Obi-Wan.

“It isn’t very likely,” he said again. “I hope – I do hope that –” He stopped abruptly, his head turning towards the diner’s kitchen as if he had heard something. “Oh, good,” he said in a more normal voice. “Our omelet’s arrived.”

Padmé stared at him blankly for several seconds before she remembered the special order Obi-Wan had made when they first arrived.

“Our omelet?” she repeated.

Obi-Wan arched his eyebrows. A minute later a huge Besalisk pushed his way out through the kitchen doors, calling a cheery hello to the Aleena family. He ambled over to their table, eyeing them without recognition. “Someone order a gartro omelet special?” he said cautiously.

“That would be me,” Obi-Wan said, dropping the Kiffar accent for the first time that evening. “Hello, Dex.”

The Besalisk did a double take, peering at him more closely. “Is that you behind that face paint?” he said. “Flo said some Kiffar had ordered the special, but I was expecting our friend Vos. And in that get-up, too!”

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows, the Kiffar accent back in place as he said, “It is me. Let me introduce you to my dear friend Satine.”

Padmé blinked, but Obi-Wan hadn’t even hesitated for an instant. She held out her hand for the Besalisk to shake, saying, “It’s a pleasure, Mister –”

“Dexter Jettster, but everyone calls me Dex.” He brushed a kiss across the back of her hand. “What’s a beautiful lady like you doing hanging around with this knucklehead?”

“Oh, I find that he has redeeming qualities,” Padmé said mischievously, and saw Obi-Wan blush and Dex laugh.

Obi-Wan said, “Pull up a chair, Dex, if you’ve got a few minutes.”

“For you, any time,” said the Besalisk. He carried a chair over from one of the empty tables and settled his bulk in it, peering at Obi-Wan with narrowed eyes. “You haven’t been eating enough, have you?”

“You say that every time I come in,” Obi-Wan said. Padmé saw him relax slightly, some of the tension leaving him.

“Well, it’s true every time. What can I do you for?”

For a moment Obi-Wan hesitated, then he said, “Have you heard anything about a new Separatist general called Darth Vader?”

Dex leaned an elbow on the table, his expression thoughtful – at least as far as Padmé could tell – and finally shook his head. “That his only name?”

“The only one I’m aware of,” Obi-Wan said. “He would have appeared about two months ago.”

“All I know is that the Seppies have some hotshot new general who makes mincemeat of anyone who gets in his way, but the problem with no survivors is that, well –”

“No one left to tell the stories,” Obi-Wan said, and sighed. “I was afraid of that. And the other?”

Dex shook his head slowly. “No word on Skywalker. I’m sorry, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan dropped his gaze, his shoulders drooping. “It was a long shot,” he said. “Keep an ear out, will you? There’s something else going on here, something elusive.”

Dex clapped his shoulder with a massive hand. “Always. I’m sorry I can’t be more help –”

“Don’t worry about it,” Obi-Wan said. He rubbed a hand over his face, looking tired; Padmé was fascinated to see that the stripe of yellow paint – if it was paint – over his nose and cheekbones didn’t smear.

Dex looked at him with surprising sympathy on his broad, amphibian features. “Is there anything else?” he asked. “I’d hate for you to have made this trip for nothing, especially all done up –”

“It wasn’t for your benefit, trust me,” Obi-Wan said, but he didn’t look at Padmé when he said it. “I’m only on Coruscant for about –” He glanced at the chrono over the counter. “– another twelve hours. The only places I’m supposed to be are the Temple, the Senate Building, and the shipyards.”

“They’re running you boys rough,” Dex said disapprovingly. “When did you get back? Last I heard you were still out on the Outer Rim.”

“Five hours ago. It’s rather a flying visit, I’m afraid. Dex, have you heard anything about a planet called Mustafar? It’s volcanic, on the Outer Rim, mostly owned by the Techno Union.”

“It’s a mining world. Minerals mostly, extracted from the lava. Nasty place,” he added with a shiver. “I went once. Worst decision of my life. Not planning a vacation there, are you?”

“No, just an invasion,” Obi-Wan said, with a touch of good humor. “What kinds of minerals? The kind that – hypothetically – could be used for weapons manufacturing?”

Dex and Padmé both looked at him in surprise. “Could be,” Dex said slowly. “One of them is mirkanite. I’ve heard rumors that the Techno Union’s been playing around with a new type of superlaser. Nothing solid, mind you, but –”

Obi-Wan pressed his hands together and tipped his forehead against them. After a moment he nodded. “That was what I needed to know. Thank you.”

Dex studied him, his expression troubled. “You be careful out there, Obi-Wan.”

“Yes, of course,” Obi-Wan said absently.

“I mean it. The Republic can’t afford to lose you too.”

Obi-Wan’s gaze darted up, but all he said was, “You will tell me if you hear anything about Anakin or Vader, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Dex said, squeezing his shoulder. The door jangled as a group of laughing Togruta teenagers spilled in, and in the instant that Padmé glanced at them, Obi-Wan transformed from the weary Jedi Master to the smiling Kiffar Guardian.

“You think we could get some of that cake, Dex?” he asked, sing-song Kiffar accent stronger than ever.

*

Afterwards, stuffed full of cake and strong, sweet coffee, they walked to the nearest cab stand. Down here in the lower city, it was quiet; night had fallen and the work day ended. In the distance Padmé could hear speeders zipping past and music spilling out of cantinas, but on this residential street it was surprisingly peaceful. It was almost possible to forget that on the other side of the galaxy war raged on, men and women fighting and dying for the Republic.

Almost.

At last Obi-Wan said, “Padmé, I’m leaving in the morning. If Ahsoka was still here, I could assign her to protect you, but I’ve been looking for her since Odryn and she’s completely dropped off the radar. I don’t have the authority to assign anyone else, not without going to the Supreme Chancellor –”

“No,” Padmé said swiftly, and he looked at her in surprise.

“Has Palpatine said something to you?”

She licked her lips. “Obi-Wan, there’s no proof. My security detail knows – both Captain Typho’s men and the Blues assigned to me – but there haven’t been any threats. The attack on Moteé could have just been a coincidence; there have been pirates in that region of space since the war began and the Republic patrols were diverted elsewhere. If I go running to the Chancellor, I just look like another scared girl. Gifts? A bad feeling? Do _you_ think that he’d listen to me? And even if he did, do you think that he’d take anything else I said seriously, in the Senate or out of it?”

He sighed. “You’re right, Padmé. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Without an official request to the Order – and since it’s not pertinent to the war, the Council would have to turn it down – there’s no way I can protect you unless you come with me to Mustafar. Which you can’t do, obviously.”

Padmé opened her mouth to agree with him, then stopped. Whoever was stalking her, he could get into her apartments without alerting her security. And Moteé, along with eleven other members of her retinue, was dead. Choked to death without a mark on her.

Obi-Wan stared at her. “By the Force, you’re serious,” he said. “Padmé, it might be a false alarm, but it’s probably not. Most likely we’re going weapons hot into a war zone. I can’t in good conscience advise you to accompany the _Resolute_.”

“Technically, the Techno Union is a neutral party in this war,” Padmé said. “A Republic battle group –”

“We can only spare one star destroyer.”

“– showing up in neutral space without warning could have massive political repercussions. A Senate-appointed negotiator of significant rank could go a long way towards smoothing that over.”

They stopped next to the cab stand, which was currently unoccupied. Obi-Wan peered at her worriedly. “You’re afraid,” he said slowly.

“I’m terrified,” Padmé said frankly. “The Senate can spare me for a few days. I’ll tell Bail Organa and Mon Mothma the real reason I’m leaving; I’ll deal with Palpatine,” she added, anticipating Obi-Wan’s next protest. “I don’t like war, Obi-Wan, but it won’t be my first. And I’ll feel far safer in the company of a Jedi Knight on a Republic warship packed with clone troopers than I do right now, even if you are flying into combat.”

After a moment Obi-Wan nodded. He raised a hand to get the attention of a hovercab, which dropped down in front of them, its doors sliding open as the Dug driver tapped her fingers impatiently on the control yoke.

“Anakin will never forgive me if I get you killed,” Obi-Wan said, handing her into the cab.

“If it is him,” Padmé replied, smoothing the folds of her long jacket over her knees, “Anakin will never forgive himself if he kills both of us.”

*

By the time Obi-Wan had changed and returned to the Jedi Temple, he was so tired that he thought he was actually starting to see things. Unusually for him, the Force seemed to shiver at the edge of his vision; Obi-Wan kept turning his head, thinking that someone ( _Anakin?_ ) was there. His ears rang with the sound of clashing lightsabers.

_You really need to get some sleep, Kenobi._

But with sleep would come the dreams. Obi-Wan was sure that they were connected to Anakin somehow, but in truth he had nothing to base that on except his instincts. And his instincts, as Mace Windu had told him not unkindly after Odryn, were clouded when it came to Anakin.

Yawning, he waved the door to his chambers open. They were dusty with disuse, in places still littered with the detritus of Anakin’s occupation, despite the fact that he hadn’t shared them with Obi-Wan since he’d been Knighted. Obi-Wan took a step inside, his mind still running raggedly over all the things that had to be done before they departed in the morning – he’d commed the shipyards again just to be sure, and been assured by a tired-sounding junior officer that Admiral Yularen and his staff had it well in hand – and then stopped dead at the sight of the large box sitting in the center of the room.

Unlike everything else in his chambers, there was no dust on it. Every trace of exhaustion fled Obi-Wan in a rush as he stepped cautiously towards it, his heart pounding in his throat as he flipped the lid back.

There was an exhale as the stasis seal broke. Obi-Wan caught his breath on his automatic curse, covering his mouth with one hand as he reached for his comlink. He hadn’t expected this here on Coruscant, within the Jedi Temple itself, but –

“ _Padmé_ ,” he said out loud, horrified, and left the door open behind him as he ran for the nearest speeder bay.

By pushing the speeder to its limits and breaking most of Coruscant’s traffic laws – fortunately the Jedi beacon on the speeder kept the police off his tail – Obi-Wan made it to 500 Republica in less than ten minutes, almost crashing into the verandah as he brought came to a stop and vaulted out. Two of Padmé’s Naboo security guards melted out of the shadows, lowering their weapons as they recognized him. Neither seemed surprised to see him.

“She’s inside, General,” said one of them, a dark-featured woman almost a head taller than him.

Obi-Wan nodded and pushed past them, into Padmé’s lushly appointed apartments. She was standing at the opposite end of the living room, wearing a robe and with her hair loose around her shoulders as one of her handmaidens spoke to her. Both of them turned at his approach.

“Obi-Wan,” Padmé said, her face blank with surprise. “I was about to comm you –”

“It’s happened again, hasn’t it?” he asked. Beyond her, on the end of the couch, he could see a pile of torn wrapping paper and a gleam of bright metal and jewels. “Another gift.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I got one too,” Obi-Wan said. “He sent me the heads and lightsabers of two dead Jedi.”


	8. Revelations

After that, there was no question of Obi-Wan going back to the Temple. Putting aside the fact that he got as far as standing on the verandah and staring at his speeder, wondering how he had gotten it here without crashing it, Padmé, understandably spooked, had asked him to stay. One of her handmaidens made up a bed for him in the spare bedroom while Obi-Wan commed the Temple to tell them about the box of body parts in his rooms.

He signed off to find Padmé standing in the doorway to the kitchen, where he had made the call. She was standing with her arms wrapped around herself, swallowed up by a robe that was too big for her – Anakin’s, undoubtedly. “This isn’t the first time, is it?” she asked.

Obi-Wan began to fumble his vambraces off, his fingers clumsy on the clasps. “No,” he said. “It isn’t. I didn’t want to tell you earlier –”

“How many?”

He put his right vambrace down on the counter with a click, studying the faded Jedi insignia. “This makes seventeen in the past six weeks.”

Padmé drew in a sharp breath.

“Heads, hands, and lightsabers,” Obi-Wan said, starting in on the other gauntlet. “I suppose he thinks that he’s making some kind of point.”

“What does the Jedi Council say?”

Obi-Wan shrugged. “What can they say? We’re stretched too thin right now to do anything about it. Comms at the Temple will put it through to Yoda, but he’s on Saleucami at the moment. All he can do is tell me not to take it too personally, never mind that I’m the only Jedi in the Order getting such…gifts.” He put the second vambrace down and leaned on the counter, resting his head on one hand. “I’m sorry, Padmé. I haven’t been sleeping much. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“You aren’t,” she assured him, resting a hand lightly on his arm in passing as she made her way over to the cupboards. “Sometimes I think that you Jedi ask too much of yourselves. You’re only human.”

“Not all of us are,” Obi-Wan said, with a ghost of good humor. He took the shot glass that Padmé handed him, holding it steady as she poured it nearly full of pale purple liquor. The sharp floral scent of the alcohol filled the room.

“You know what I meant.” She tapped her own shot glass against his, a little of the liquor spilling out of each glass and over their fingers. They drank in unison, the alcohol burning its way down Obi-Wan’s throat and making him blink. He turned the glass down on the counter beside his vambraces.

Padmé capped the bottle and set it aside, leaning forward with her elbows on the counter. “It’s good of you to stay, Obi-Wan. I could have had a driver take you back. You wouldn’t have had to have flown yourself.”

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I left and something happened to you,” Obi-Wan said. “It seems unlikely that he – if it is a he – would try something here on Coruscant, but it isn’t worth taking the chance.” He frowned in concern. “I don’t know how the package got past the Temple’s security scans, for that matter. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Tell me about the others,” Padmé said. “If you’re allowed, I mean. Are you?”

Obi-Wan scoffed. “The Council, admit that the Jedi aren’t infallible? That will be the day. This is the seventh – no, the eighth such parcel I’ve received. The first on Coruscant, but of course I haven’t been here. The others came on planetside deployments. Two on Darkknell, others on Jebble, Cato Neimodia, Telerath, Taris, Muunilinst.” He ticked the planets off on his fingers, frowning. “None of the other Jedi were on the same deployment as me – we’re spread too thin these days to put more than one Jedi in the same engagement unless it’s a master and padawan pair.”

“Were they friends of yours?”

“No. I knew a few of them in passing, and I had a class with Rejiaan Dare – she was the fifth, on Telerath; she was stationed on Felucia – when we were both padawans, but the others are strangers.” Obi-Wan swept a hand through his hair. “Most are relatively junior Knights – the most recent two haven’t been identified yet, but the girl had a padawan braid. That will narrow it down,” he added bitterly.

Padmé drew in her breath, her eyes wide. There were fewer padawans in the field now, but that still left hundreds. “Can’t they just check the most recent casualty reports?” she asked, a little hesitantly.

“More than a dozen Jedi die every week. Others just disappear,” Obi-Wan said. _Like Anakin_ , he didn’t add. Didn’t need to; he could sense the edge of Padmé’s thoughts drifting towards him at the mention of disappearances. “There was a stasis seal on the container; they might have been in there for days, or even longer.”

Though not, he thought, more than eight weeks – not since before Odryn, when things had started going so horribly, terribly awry and the war had taken a definite turn for the worse.

He fell silent, running a finger through some of the spilled alcohol on the counter, tracing the familiar curves of the Jedi symbol. _I am so tired_ , he thought. He could feel his grip on the Force slipping, ever so slightly, felt the beginning of one of those small, uncontrolled bursts of Force energy that had been occurring with increasing frequency since Odryn.

Abruptly he straightened, scooping up his discarded vambraces in one hand. “I have to be at the shipyards by 0600,” he said, watching Padmé’s gaze flicker towards him at the movement. “We mean to depart by 0800, barring any major emergencies – do you still mean to petition Palpatine to accompany us?”

Behind her, a rack of wineglasses began to tremble. Obi-Wan stared at it, feeling the web of the Force curling out around him, the ragged strands of it vibrating beneath the strength of his mind. _Stop that_ , he thought furiously, and slowly, too slowly, the trembling began to slow.

If Padmé had noticed the disturbance, she made no sign of it. “Yes. He keeps early hours; I should be able to catch him in the morning before you depart.” She gave him a faintly worried look from beneath long dark lashes. “I _can_ help smooth things over with the Techno Union if they kick up a fuss.”

Obi-Wan, thinking of that box of severed limbs on the floor of his chambers, couldn’t blame her for wanting to be out of this place and in the safe company of a Jedi Knight and a battalion of clone troopers. “I’m sure you can, and we’ll be very happy to have you if Palpatine agrees.”

Padmé nodded solemnly, collecting the empty glasses to put in the sink. “If I don’t get permission, I’ll come by the shipyards to see you off. I had Captain Typho take your speeder to the transport bays, by the way; he’ll leave the claim chip here for you in case you have to leave before I’m up.”

“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said solemnly. “You’ll keep Artoo with you tonight?”

“Scanners on,” she assured him. “And you’re only a wall away in case anything happens, and I’ve got half a dozen Naboo guards here too. Get some sleep, Obi-Wan. You need it more than I do.”

“I’ll try,” Obi-Wan said. The wineglasses had started to tremble again, rocking gently in their rack. He turned hastily away, hoping that having them out of his line of sight would help.

Padmé laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I know you didn’t have to –”

Obi-Wan bowed to her. “It is my sincere pleasure, my lady.”

*

For the first time in weeks, Obi-Wan slept without dreams. He woke in the thin, pale light of a Coruscant dawn, briefly as confused by his surroundings as he was by the buzzing of his comlink. After a moment he fumbled his hands free of the clinging sheets and retrieved his comlink from the nightstand where he had dropped it, along with his lightsaber and vambraces, the night before.

“Kenobi,” he said, his voice bleary with sleep.

_“Temple comms, Master Kenobi,”_ said the senior padawan on the other end. _“I have the Grand Master here for you; but your comlink doesn’t have the range. Is there a secure comm device with a boosted signal capacity where you are?”_

“Yes – just a moment.” Obi-Wan found his pants and padded barefoot out of the guest bedroom, nodding to one of Padmé’s security guards as he slipped into the apartment’s study. He plugged his comlink into the holoprojector’s comm panel and knelt down in front of it, wondering if he ought to have put on a shirt as well.

After a moment, Yoda’s image appeared in the projection field, thin and wavering with distance; Padmé’s holoprojector wasn’t as strong as the Supreme Chancellor’s or the High Council’s. He peered dubiously at Obi-Wan.

_“Sorry to disturb you, I am, Obi-Wan.”_

“No disturbance, Master,” Obi-Wan said, glancing at the chrono on the wall. “I have to be at the shipyards in an hour anyway.”

Yoda made a disapproving noise. _“Reassigned so quickly you should not have been. Rest you require.”_

“We will have no rest until this war is ended, Master,” Obi-Wan said. “What is it?”

_“Identified the murdered Jedi have been,”_ said Yoda without further preamble. _“Master Tandres and his padawan, Sketh-Tir. Lost on Bastion they were eight rotations ago.”_

When the planet had been overrun by the Separatists. Obi-Wan dropped his head and nodded, biting his lip.

_“Blame yourself you should not, Obi-Wan,”_ Yoda said. _“Killed by the Sith they were, not by you.”_

“So it was Vader commanding the Separatist forces on Bastion, then, like we thought?”

_“Concern yourself with Vader you should not,”_ Yoda said flatly.

“Vader has concerned himself with me,” Obi-Wan snapped. “He is not sending the heads of the Jedi he has murdered to you or Master Windu or anyone else on the High Council; he is sending them to me.”

_“Certain it is that behind this Vader is we are not, Obi-Wan. Distracted you are. Better to concentrate on your new assignment it would be.”_

Obi-Wan rubbed a hand over his beard. “Perhaps I’m distracted because someone left a box of body parts in my room last night.”

He could feel Yoda’s disapproval even across the thousands of light-years between them. _“Not at the Jedi Temple you are.”_

“No.” He didn’t elaborate.

Yoda’s frown deepened, but all he said was, _“When secured Mustafar has been, needed on Boz Pity you and your troops are.”_

“No.” Obi-Wan wasn’t even aware of the words until they were already past. “When I’m finished on Mustafar, I’m going after Anakin. I have put it off for long enough.”

_“Dead Anakin Skywalker is. Accept this, you_ must.”

“My feelings tell me otherwise,” Obi-Wan said. “I will do this with or without the approval of the Council, Master Yoda.”

Yoda glanced over his shoulder, as though he had heard something the holotransmitter hadn’t picked up, then turned back and said, _“Not over this discussion is, Obi-Wan. Allow this Darth Vader to blind you to your duty you must not.”_

“My duty is to the Jedi,” Obi-Wan said. “Not to the Supreme Chancellor’s private war.”

_“And to the Jedi and the Republic your allegiance is!”_

“I will not spend the next five years waiting to find Anakin’s severed head in my bed!” Obi-Wan snapped. “The Force tells me that he is still alive. I will either find him or find proof of his death. That is my final word on the matter.”

Yoda’s gaze focused on a point behind Obi-Wan, his frown settling even more deeply on his wizened features. Obi-Wan didn’t turn, knowing who it had to be, and said softly, “I am not asking for permission, Master,” before he terminated the call.

He sat back on his heels, his hands flat against his knees, and wondered what in blazes he had just done.

Padmé rested a manicured hand lightly on his shoulder. “Are you in trouble?”

“That depends,” Obi-Wan said. “This time last year, they could have grounded me, but now they can’t afford to. There aren’t enough Jedi left for that. Even if they try, the Supreme Chancellor will overrule them. I’m the only Knight on Coruscant of appropriate rank and temperament to be sent out with a battle group. The others are all either walking wounded or Temple-bound.” He considered. “The Chancellor has played Knights against the Council before – he did it with Anakin last year when I went undercover. I don’t think they’ll want to risk another power struggle if it comes to that.”

He stood up, gently dislodging her hand. “Of course, they may luck out and I’ll be stuck on Mustafar for the next six months. There’s no way to tell until we arrive.”

She looked at him with concern, playing with the end of her long braid. “Why doesn’t the Jedi Council want you to go after Anakin?”

“The Council believes he’s dead,” Obi-Wan said. “According to them, no one could have survived that blast on Odryn. But at least one other being did.” He fell silent, then leaned over to pluck his comlink free of the comm panel. “I’ve got to go. I expect to see you at the shipyards by 0730, Senator.”

Padmé glanced at the chrono and sighed. “I’d better go too if I mean to catch the Supreme Chancellor before the rest of the hangers-on.”

“You’ll be all right?” Obi-Wan asked.

“He’s never done anything in daytime,” Padmé said cautiously. “Just watched, as far as I can tell. And it’s only a few hours anyway.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “I’ll see you at the shipyards,” he said again, covering a yawn with his free hand. “How many guests shall I be telling Admiral Yularen to expect?”

“Me, two handmaidens, Threepio, and a guard squadron,” Padmé said. “I’d go alone, but if it’s official, then I might as well act like it.”

“Very good,” Obi-Wan said. “Well, we’ve certainly got the space.”

*

Senator Amidala’s appearance at the shipyards a few hours later, retinue and luggage firmly in tow, led to a certain amount of speculative gossip onboard the _Resolute_. Most of Anakin’s troops were familiar with her, while the majority of Obi-Wan’s, barring Cody and a few others, only knew her by reputation. When one of Obi-Wan’s handful of new troopers – all transfers from depleted battalions – made a snide comment, Rex threw him into the nearest wall, the man’s arm twisted behind his back.

“You don’t talk about the Senator like that,” he said. “You hear me? Or I’ll make this feel like a love tap.”

The new trooper – Obi-Wan thought his name was Floret – ground out a muffled, “Yes, sir.”

Rex released him and stepped back, picking up the helmet he had dropped. When the two clones saw Obi-Wan watching, they both frowned, but Obi-Wan only gave them a short nod and continued on his way up to the bridge to join Admiral Yularen.

Their departure was, surprisingly, only half an hour late – the delay caused by Coruscant air traffic control nearly crashing a Home Fleet starcruiser into a commercial spaceliner. Obi-Wan and Yularen watched the near collision through the bridge viewport, turning towards each other in silent disbelief as the cruiser captain executed an impressive barrel roll that shouldn’t have been possible in a vessel that size. The sound of the two crews’ overlapping curses blistered the airwaves on the traffic control frequency.

Obi-Wan tapped his headset and said, in the cultured tones that, due to (in his opinion) far too aggressive HoloNet coverage, were known throughout the galaxy, “Ladies, please.”

Horrified silence followed this pronouncement.

“Nice trick,” Yularen said once they were finally underway, the starcruiser having set down in the shipyards and the spaceliner at Galactic City spaceport.

“It is rather,” Obi-Wan allowed, studying the holomaps. Their route was picked out in yellow, Mustafar a distant red dot at the far end of the galaxy. Despite its distance from the Core, the system’s proximity to several hyperlanes would cut their travel time down from nearly a week to less than a day. Obi-Wan tried to find it in himself to be relieved, but mostly he was aware that they could have used a few days shipside to recover from the Muunilinst campaign if they weren’t going to be allowed a planetside furlough.

From Yularen’s expression, he felt the same. Earlier he had confided to Obi-Wan his uneasiness about heading into an unknown situation without backup, but the other ships from the _Resolute_ ’s battle group were either in spacedock undergoing repairs or reassigned. The destruction of the Republic shipyards on Allanteen Six five weeks ago had stretched the Republic Navy nearly to its breaking point.

“With any luck, we’ll be able to avoid hostilities,” Obi-Wan said, running a hand through his hair. “That’s why Senator Amidala is here, after all.” He turned towards the holoprojection of Mustafar itself, known manufacturing complexes highlighted in red. “If an engagement does become necessary, we’ll need to gain control of the skies before beginning a ground assault, if possible.”

“With only one ship, we won’t be able to hold off a Separatist fleet for long,” Yularen reminded him.

“Agreed,” Obi-Wan said. He stared at the hologram, stroking his beard. “It may become necessary for the _Resolute_ to insert ground troops and retreat to Republic space.”

“General, I can’t advise –”

“Obviously that won’t be my first choice,” Obi-Wan added dryly. “However, if it becomes necessary, your orders are to insert myself and my troops and return Senator Amidala and her retinue to Republic space. The Senator cannot be allowed to become a Separatist hostage.” He paused significantly. “I know for a fact that members of the Trade Federation would stop at nothing to put her head on a pike, though Count Dooku would settle for using her as a bargaining chip. Is that understood, Admiral?”

Yularen nodded. “I don’t like it,” he said.

“Nor do I,” Obi-Wan allowed. “But I’d rather have that clear before we arrive in the middle of a firefight.”

*

They were still three hours out from Mustafar, in the midst of their second hyperspace jump, and Obi-Wan was sitting tailor-style on his rack trying to meditate when someone knocked on his door. He opened his eyes, frowning a little, and said, “Come in, Senator.”

Padmé, dressed as one of her handmaidens, slipped inside and settled on the empty rack opposite him. She pulled her knees up to her chest, which made her look young and tired and a little scared.

“What can I do for you, Senator?” Obi-Wan asked, hoping no one had seen her come in. Even the Jedi didn’t gossip like the clones did.

“You can tell me about Odryn,” Padmé said.

Somehow Obi-Wan had known that was coming. He unfolded his legs from their cross-legged position and got up to dig around in his clothing locker, eventually coming up with a bottle of bright green liquor and a pair of shot glasses.

Padmé smiled, taking the glasses and holding them steady while Obi-Wan poured. “So this is what you and Ani get up to in your free time. And here I thought it was all lightsaber sparring and meditation.”

“Only most of the time,” Obi-Wan said, capping the bottle and setting it aside. He took the shot quickly, the fiery, fruity liquor making his eyes water.

Padmé put her own empty shot glass down on the bed beside her, looking at him inquisitively.

“What do you know about Odryn?” Obi-Wan asked. “I don’t know if there was ever a proper report produced for the Senate.”

He hadn’t written one, at least. Anakin hadn’t been able to.

“Just that the Republic invasion failed and Anakin went missing there,” Padmé said. Her voice wavered for an instant on Anakin’s name, then steadied. “I know that he lost more than half of his men. The invasion was criticized because it wasn’t strategically important – Orn Free Taa claimed that it was a trap for the Jedi.”

“It was,” Obi-Wan said. He turned the shot glass over in his hands, watching the way the room’s light reflected off the chipped glass. “Just probably not the way the Senator believes. Odryn is an old colony world of the Feeorin people. About four thousand years ago, during the Mandalorian Wars, a group of rogue Jedi who called themselves the Covenant gathered together a huge collection of Sith artifacts – objects imbued with the Force, with various powers. I know it sounds like superstition,” he added quickly, seeing her expression, “but these kinds of relics do exist. We don’t know how to make them anymore, and they’re far more common for the Sith than the Jedi – we don’t tend to put our trust in objects, just in ourselves. There are a number of them in storage at the Temple, as well as at several offworld sites – though most of those are in the Temple vaults now; those sites were considered too vulnerable to attack after the war began.

“The Covenant’s collection was believed to have been destroyed, but there have been rumors for millennia that some of them might have survived. The University of Alderaan archaeology survey team was doing a dig on Odryn when they started uncovering a layer of damage that dated back to the Mandalorian Wars, along with artifacts that they dated much earlier, to the Great Sith Wars. Dooku found out about it somehow – maybe he intercepted their transmissions, maybe he just saw the HoloNet report. He launched a planetary invasion, which scared off the locals and the survey team. Most of the Sith artifacts that we know about are extremely dangerous – they’d do more harm than a nuclear weapon or a biological attack if they were used on an inhabited world, and most of them have been missing for millennia. If Dooku was to get his hands on even one of them…”

He shook his head, frowning, and ran his thumb over the chip in the shot glass’s rim. Padmé was listening, her face drawn tight with concentration.

“The risk was too great to allow the planet to remain in Dooku’s hands. Anakin and I were assigned to reconquer the planet. We launched separate assaults, meaning to rendezvous at the dig site. My troops met resistance from the south, and Anakin reached the dig site before I did. Captain Rex told me that he and Anakin were separated while they secured the site.” Obi-Wan swallowed, resisting the urge to pour himself another shot. For all he knew, he’d be fighting for his life in a few hours. “None of the clones who were with Anakin survived. I was close enough to see the explosion, and we reached it a few minutes later. The blast zone covered the entire dig site and half the nearby village. There was no incendiary device – at least, no sign of it that I saw when I arrived. As far as I can tell, it came entirely from the Force. At least one of the artifacts must have still been viable, if damaged, and Anakin must have activated it by accident somehow. Some Sith artifacts will react to the presence of a Jedi.”

He fell silent, turning the glass over and over.

Padmé said, a little hesitantly, “You said earlier that at least one other being survived the blast. Was it one of the clones?”

Obi-Wan looked up. “No. It was a Sith lord that we know only as Darth Vader.”

With dawning realization, Padmé said, “You asked your friend Dex about him last night.”

“Yes. The first time he appeared was on Odryn, after the blast. From what Rex tells me, he must have arrived under cover of the explosion. The clones that responded panicked and opened fire when they saw him. He killed most of them; the fighting was still going on when I arrived.” Obi-Wan stopped, feeling the ache in his mind, as though part of it had been ripped messily away, the wound sloppily numbed by ice. He could still remember the horrible moment that Anakin had simply blinked out of the Force, replaced an instant later by someone whose Force-presence burned like a hot coal. “He recognized me. Or maybe he merely recognized that I was a Jedi. We dueled briefly, but the explosion must have drawn the attention of the Separatists still onplanet – although they were being redeployed to Iego, many of them were still onworld. We had – I had no choice except to withdraw. We’d taken too many losses. Sixty percent of Anakin’s troops were gone. We were already operating at half-capacity. If we’d remained onplanet, it would have been a massacre. We couldn’t afford to take a loss like that.”

It was the same language that he had used when he’d made his report to the Council, again to the Chancellor, what he told himself over and over again in the long dark stretches of the night, trying to justify not merely a retreat, but having to flee without being able to take the time to search for survivors. Without having searched for Anakin.

_If I left him to Dooku’s tender mercies –_

Obi-Wan couldn’t decide whether or not Anakin was better off dead. 

He cleared his throat, aware of the roughness in his voice as he said, “The Chancellor agreed with the Council that it was best to keep news of Vader quiet as long as possible. He’s one of Dooku’s batch of new generals, just as dangerous as Grievous and as vicious – we know of over a dozen Jedi that he’s killed personally since he appeared.” Some of whom the Council had only been able to identify when their heads showed up in Obi-Wan’s quarters, no matter what planet he was on at the time.

“Where did he come from?” Padmé’s voice was soft.

“We don’t know. I think – _I_ think,” he was careful to emphasize the pronoun, “I think that he was one of the Odryn relics, a Sith lord from four or five millennia ago that’s been in stasis this entire time. There’s a Jedi fairy tale like that – of course, in that story it’s a Jedi in the container, not a Sith. The explosion could have broken it open.” He glanced down at the glass again, blinking when he realized that it was floating a few inches above his hands, vibrating so violently that hairline cracks were beginning to appear on its surface. “Blast.”

He tried to pluck the shot glass out of the air, feeling it resist him before it burst in a shower of glass shards that hung glittering for a few seconds before falling to the floor in front of him.

Padmé drew in her breath.

“Keep your feet up,” Obi-Wan warned her wearily, getting up to sweep the broken glass into a dustpan with the help of the Force to make sure he didn’t miss any pieces.

“Obi-Wan,” she said after he had dumped them into the bin. “Are you all right?”

“Probably not,” Obi-Wan admitted, returning to his seat. It was his third uncontrollable burst of Force energy in less than two days. They had been occurring with increasing frequency since Odryn. He didn’t like to think about what that might mean.

“Are you all right to fight if we can’t negotiate with the Techno Union, I mean?”

“Yes, of course,” he said impatiently. “Padmé, it was an accident. They happen.”

Granted, they normally happened to younglings who had only the most slipshod control of the Force, but there was no need for her to know that. Obi-Wan pushed his hair back from his face, aware, as usual, of the raw place in his mind where Anakin had been ripped away and replaced with something – _someone_ – else.

Padmé pressed her cheek to her knees, her gaze on him. She didn’t feel particularly afraid – but then, of course, she wouldn’t. She knew Anakin too well to be afraid of a Jedi Knight, even one in the midst of losing control of the Force.

Obi-Wan could sense her trying to decide what to ask him. Finally, she said, “ _Could_ Anakin still be alive? Could he have survived that?”

“I don’t – I don’t know if he was at the epicenter of the blast,” Obi-Wan admitted. “He could have protected himself with the Force. We never had time to look for a body.” He clenched his fist, fingernails digging into the soft part of his palm. “If anyone could have survived it, it would be Anakin.”

_Are you afraid, Jedi? Fear leads to the Dark Side._

“But you think he’s alive.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. 

Padmé scrubbed her hands over her face, smearing her makeup. “I’m going with you,” she said.

Startled, Obi-Wan looked up. “What?”

“When you go to look for him, like you told Yoda. I’m going with you. The Senate can do without me – it’s not as though I’m making much difference anyway in this political climate.”

“Of course you are,” Obi-Wan said automatically, though in actuality he didn’t think that anyone who opposed the Supreme Chancellor’s increasing attempts to centralize power in his person would be able to accomplish anything more complicated than a bill to beautify spaceports. “You care about Anakin that much?”

She hesitated for a moment. “You can tell if I’m lying, can’t you?”

“Sometimes,” Obi-Wan said.

Padmé tilted her chin up to look him in the eye. “I love him. But you already knew that. You just wanted to hear me say it?”

Obi-Wan ran a hand over his beard. “Of course I knew,” he said. “I’m not blind, and I’ve been inside Anakin’s head often enough to know how he feels. He’s certainly proven it more times than I can count. I was just curious,” he added gently. Perhaps it was cruel to make her say it, but – no, he had needed to hear the words.

Padmé sighed and looked away. “Why didn’t the Jedi inform the Senate of any of this?”

Obi-Wan shrugged. “The Supreme Chancellor made that decision.”

Padmé pulled her arms tight around her bent legs, pressing her cheek against her knees again. “Thank you for telling me,” she said eventually. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“You deserve to know,” Obi-Wan said simply. He got up to put the bottle and Padmé’s empty glass away, checking the time as he did so. “You should go back to your rooms and get some sleep. We still have a few hours before we make planetfall.”

“Would you mind if I stayed here?” she asked, a hint of color in her cheeks. “It’s just that Sabé’s pretending to be me right now. I won’t be missed.”

Obi-Wan sincerely doubted that, but all he said was, “Of course. As long as you don’t snore.”

*

Obi-Wan and Padmé – now dressed once more in her senatorial robes – were up on the bridge with Admiral Yularen when the _Resolute_ came out of hyperspace on the far end of the Mustafar system. Obi-Wan slipped a headset on, pressing one finger to the earbud as a proximity alert sounded and a none-too-pleasant mechanical voice said, _“Attention, Republic military vessel, you are entering restricted Techno Union space. You are ordered to depart immediately.”_

“Well, at least it’s not ‘restricted Confederacy of Independent Systems space’,” Obi-Wan remarked. He tapped a finger against his headset to activate it and said, “This is Jedi High General Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Grand Army of the Republic, escorting Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo, representing the Galactic Senate. Put me through to whoever’s in charge.”

There was a moment of fraught silence. Admiral Yularen was watching the sensor boards, his hand hovering over the all-hands alert. Obi-Wan felt a frisson of nervous tension himself, waiting for a Separatist fleet to come out of hyperspace. The Force, overshadowed and murky as it had been since the beginning of the war, was telling him that something was about to happen, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

At last, the Techno Union rep said, _“Stand by for visual transmission.”_

Padmé smiled slightly, stepping up in front of the screen. Obi-Wan settled into position just behind her right shoulder, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now the fun begins.”

He didn’t recognize the Techno Union official who appeared on the screen, a Skakoan in his bulky pressurized suit and breathing apparatus. He peered doubtfully at Padmé and Obi-Wan. _“The Techno Union is a neutral party in this conflict,”_ he said, the words broken by the hisses of his breathing apparatus. _“You have no military jurisdiction in this system. You must depart –”_

The Techno Union was only slightly more neutral than the Trade Federation, Obi-Wan thought dryly; he still had scars from the last time he had tangled with them.

“Honored representative, I am Senator Padmé Amidala of the planet Naboo, representing the Galactic Republic and the Supreme Chancellor in this negotiation,” Padmé said, salaaming in the Skakoan fashion called the Lotus in Flower – high-ranking dominant female to lower-ranking subordinate male. Clearly flustered, the Skakoan responded, his trailing sleeves spreading as he bowed low in what Obi-Wan thought a very credible, if not particularly elegant, Dying Quadractyl.

Obi-Wan himself didn’t bow, although the tightly-stratified Skakoan society did have two salaams appropriate for Jedi Knights to make. They were called the Sun in Shadow and the Killing Moon, but since Obi-Wan’s role in this negotiation was to be Padmé’s muscle, he didn’t make either, just watched the Skakoan twitch nervously. _He’s hiding something. Well, I suppose I would have hated to make this trip for nothing._

“As you can see, I am traveling only with a small delegation and protective detail of a single Jedi Knight and one battleship,” Padmé said, which was a neat way of downplaying the fact that this was a sorry show of Republic force. “I am here on the behalf of the Galactic Senate to investigate claims that the neutral planet Mustafar is being used to manufacture a Separatist weapon to be used in military action against the Republic. If this is found to be true, Senatorial trade sanctions against the Techno Union and a Republic military invasion of this planet will result. Do you deny these claims?”

The Skakoan definitely looked flustered. “Yes – yes –” he said, then looked over his shoulder at someone who was out of the camera’s frame.

Obi-Wan felt the Force shiver, the dull ache in his mind starting to brighten into life. _He’s here_ , he thought, and found himself leaning forward slightly, as though by sheer will he could see past the cam’s pick-up. _Or he’s coming._

But Obi-Wan didn’t know who _he_ was.

“You deny that the Techno Union is not in violation of Galactic Senate Order 356 subsection 98 bar _aurek_ -12?” Padmé said.

“Yes, of course!”

“Then under Galactic Senate Order 356 subsection 112 bar _osk_ -37 paragraph 3B I and a military escort are legally permitted to investigate these claims for ourselves,” Padmé said. “You are immediately ordered to shut down all manufacturing and mining operations on this planet. We will arrive shortly. Your refusal to comply will result in immediate action from the Republic Senate. Do you understand?”

“I – yes –”

“We’ll see you shortly,” Padmé said. At her gesture, the comms officer cut the transmission. “That was too easy,” she said, turning to Obi-Wan. “They’re hiding something.”

“I agree,” he said. “I’ll go brief Rex and Cody. Admiral, bring us into orbit.” He turned to Padmé. “Senator, I’ll meet you in the portside hangar in twenty minutes.”

Padmé nodded. “Expecting trouble, General?”

“Always, Senator.”

*

Rex and Cody met him in the battle room, where they had been looking over a holomap of Mustafar’s surface along with the captains of the _Resolute_ ’s two clone fighter squadrons. One look at Obi-Wan’s face and all four of them relaxed. He could feel the adrenaline spike in the room.

“Are we on then, General?”

“We are.” Obi-Wan tapped the hologram to blow up the image of the main mining complex. “The Techno Union has decided to play coy for now. Cody and I, along with two squadrons and Captain Typho’s guards, will escort Senator Amidala into the complex for an inspection.”

“Sounds like a trap, sir,” Rex remarked.

“It is undoubtedly a trap,” Obi-Wan said. “The Senator is aware of the risk. Rex, you and your men will deploy along this ridgeline with walkers and tanks –” He pointed it out. “Send out recon squads to search for any sign of Separatist involvement. If you find it, you are to contact me; unless I say otherwise, you do not engage unless they fire first. Oddball, Fib, you and your squadrons are to remain with the _Resolute_ after ground troops have been inserted. When we land, Oddball, your squadron will do a flyover to spook the Techno Union; while they’re distracted by that and their sensors are fuzzed, gunships will land Rex and his troops and take off again. Then you’re to return to the _Resolute_. Without a battle group, you’re the only backup the _Resolute_ has. As of now, sensor boards are reading clear, but the logical move would be to wait until the Senator and I are boots on the ground and then bring a fleet out of hyperspace to take out the _Resolute_. You are to prevent that from happening.”

“Understood, sir,” Oddball said, while Fib nodded.

Obi-Wan crossed his arms. “Republic intelligence has reported that the Separatists, under cover of the Techno Union’s neutrality, are using Mustafar to manufacture a weapon powerful enough to destroy entire planets. Our orders are to secure the planet by any means necessary.” He paused to let that sink in. The clones were all watching him, their expressions grave. Obi-Wan could sense them running the same equations he had and coming up with the same results. At three-quarters strength, with only one star destroyer for support and a senator to protect, and fresh off the battlefield at Muunilinst at that, those orders could easily end in a massacre.

“Gentlemen, you are the finest soldiers I have ever fought with,” Obi-Wan said. “I have no doubt that no matter what trap the Separatists have set for us, we shall prevail.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rex said.

“You’re dismissed. Cody, wait a moment.”

The 212th’s commander hung back as the other three clones left the room, Rex glancing back over his shoulder before the door slid shut behind him. “General?”

“You and your men are to remain with Senator Amidala no matter what happens,” Obi-Wan said. “Do you understand? You’re not to leave her side. If we do engage the enemy – which is not a foregone conclusion – you may be ordered to retreat with Senator Amidala and leave the rest of our troops behind. Can you do that?”

Cody didn’t protest or suggest that it might be better to leave Padmé behind on the _Resolute_. All he said was, “Yes, sir. I can do that.”

Obi-Wan clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man.”

*

Mustafar’s landscape was even more hellish than it had appeared in the holos Obi-Wan had studied. Lava ran in rivers across the landscape, gathering in lakes that smoked and burned like something out of Obi-Wan’s worst nightmares – exactly like, actually, and he felt his unease gather in the Force, tangled up together with his precognitive wild talent. _Something is going to happen here_ , he thought as he stepped out of the gunship, offering Padmé his hand. _Something bad._

Padmé’s manicured fingers were light against his, lingering for a moment before he released her. Cody and his troopers had already left the two gunships, securing the landing platform over the uneasy protests of the waiting Techno Union guards. Captain Typho, the Naboo guards, the two droids, and Padmé’s handmaidens followed them out, the guards with their hands near the weapons and the handmaidens looking deceptively harmless. Obi-Wan knew all too well just how harmless the handmaidens really were.

The Techno Union rep who had spoken to them on the _Resolute_ came forward to greet them, looking warily between Obi-Wan and the clones. He dropped into another Dying Quadractyl; Padmé and Obi-Wan returned, respectively, a Lotus in Flower and a Killing Moon, the latter of which made the Skakoan stare at him in mounting alarm.

“I am Artificer Uhl Yarkus, Senator, Master Jedi,” he said, lifting a hand to his chest. “I represent the Techno Union here. I am instructed to inform you that as we have no arms manufacturing capabilities here, you are welcome to inspect this facility. The Techno Union has nothing to hide.” He paused, clearly trying and failing to interpret Padmé’s intentions. “You may leave your troops here.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Padmé said, her gaze sliding sideways at Obi-Wan.

He stepped back to say, “Sergeant Coric, stay with the gunships.”

“Yes, general,” said the clone sergeant, gesturing at his men. Cody and his squad fell in behind the Naboo guards as Obi-Wan returned to Padmé’s side.

He glanced up as Oddball’s fighter escort went screaming by overhead on their return to the _Resolute_. His comlink beeped once; Rex and his men had been inserted on the ridge and the gunships were on their way back to join up with the fighters. Cody caught his eye and tapped the side of his helmet; Rex must have told him over tightbeam.

Obi-Wan nodded once. They followed Uhl Yarkus into the mining complex, Obi-Wan noting the thickness of the bunker doors and the narrow entrance corridor, which forced the troops to spread out and walk in pairs. He felt a frisson of nervous energy, his hands flexing for his lightsaber. Had he been here before? He felt as though he had, even though he was certain he would have remembered it. But he could remember two blue lightsabers pinwheeling in the space between him and his opponent, striking sparks from the narrow walls of the corridor as they dueled – but he couldn’t see who he was fighting.

He flexed his hands again, glancing down and feeling faint surprise upon seeing that his right hand wasn’t covered in the black synthleather of a glove beneath his vambraces.

“Where are your employees, Artificer Yarkus?” Padmé asked, her voice breaking into the Skakoan’s account of the internal workings of the mining complex. Obi-Wan let his gaze flicker around the wide room, all its computer consoles lit but empty, expecting – bodies? Why should there have been bodies here?

A half-familiar voice rang in his head. _We’re unarmed! We surrender! Please – please, you’re a Jedi!_

He felt the echo of his own throat moving as he replied, _You fought a war to destroy the Jedi. Congratulations on your success._

_No_ , Obi-Wan thought, _no, that can’t be right –_

His wrists ached, the reflexive memory of two lightsabers striving against each other and the Force caught between the two of them, so thick that he could have shaped it with his bare hands. Force-echoes of the past? Or the future?

It couldn’t have been the past; as far as Obi-Wan knew, there had never been any fighting here, and the complex was less than twenty years old. But the future –

Obi-Wan’s wild talent in the Force was precognition, a little stronger than that of most Jedi, but far less predictable even when he was attempting to see the future. Usually it only hummed into blind certainty a bare few seconds before it would have been helpful, as it had on Naboo when he had known Qui-Gon was about to die before Darth Maul had made his killing strike. On rare occasion he was aware of events years in advance, too far out for him to understand their relevance – if any existed – to the present day. Precognition, in Obi-Wan’s experience, was far more trouble than it was worth. Jedi history had borne that out.

But this didn’t feel like precognition. It felt like a memory. It felt like someone else’s memory, going by the blinding rage and hatred that threatened to consume him, all covering up a despair that went so deep it seemed to be woven into his very bones.

He could still feel the fragile width of a human throat beneath his hand.

“We shut down all mining operations as you ordered, of course,” Artificer Yarkus said nervously. “All employees were sent home.”

“I see,” Padmé replied. “I’ll want to speak with them.”

“Oh – er, why?”

Obi-Wan fought back the furor in his head and stepped sideways to touch a holotable, letting the Force settle around him. “Because, Artificer Yarkus,” he said, both Padmé and the Skakoan turning at the sound of his voice, “your employees haven’t been here since sometime yesterday. Why _did_ you send them away?”

Yarkus made a nervous gesture with one long-fingered hand. “Perhaps you and the Senator should come into the conference room,” he said.

Padmé gave him a sharp look.

Obi-Wan glanced around for Cody and jerked his head at the door they had just come through. Two of the clones detached themselves from the rest of the squadron to take up a position near it, shifting so that they covered the door as well as the other entrances to the ops room.

He and Padmé followed Yarkus towards the conference room, Obi-Wan’s head and body echoing with the memory of walking this path another day, each step hard fought. His opponent had known him as well as he knew himself, and they had fought without quarter and without hesitation and without hope. He could taste the faint ghost of blood in his mouth where he – the other he – had cut the inside of his lip against a tooth. It was the second time that he had fought in that room that day, though the first had been more a slaughter than a duel.

The Force was clouded, tangled up in the memories, and Obi-Wan was half a step behind Padmé as Yarkus opened the doors to the conference room and practically leapt out of the way.

Too late, the Force sang a warning.

*

Obi-Wan swept his hand out to gather Padmé behind him, putting himself between her and the conference room. He felt a moment of resistance, then she permitted herself to be pushed back, her horror humming in the Force.

Darth Vader had that effect on people.

“I have been waiting for this for a long time,” he said in his heavy, mechanized voice.

Padmé gasped, clutching at Obi-Wan’s arm; the woman who had faced down Separatist battle droids, Trade Federation assassins, and Count Dooku himself without blinking was shocked into silence by the sight of Vader. Obi-Wan couldn’t blame her. Vader was massive, a humanoid figure taller than most men clad in black armor and a helmet-like mask that concealed every inch of his skin. The Council had theorized that beneath the armor – Obi-Wan could see the life-support controls on his chest – he might be human or near-human, having taken massive injuries sometime in the past that had made it impossible for him to live without his armor. His black cloak billowed behind him as he came around the side of the conference table, his lightsaber hilt gleaming at his hip.

The Dark Side of the Force hovered around him like a stormcloud, and something about him was so familiar that Obi-Wan actually rocked back for an instant, his mind skittering over a possibility halfway between a memory and a foretelling. _No. It can’t be. I’d know._

Obi-Wan pushed Padmé further back, aware without the necessity of looking of the battle droids marching into the room, the Naboo guards and handmaidens moving to encircle Padmé, the clones starting to form square around them.

“So have I,” he said, shedding his cloak with a shimmer of brown fabric. Slowly, deliberately, he took a step forward into the room, watching the way Vader’s helmeted head moved to look over Obi-Wan’s shoulder at Padmé. Obi-Wan couldn’t read his face – for all he knew there wasn’t a face to read; unlike General Grievous, Vader didn’t even seem to have organic eyes that were still capable of functioning independently – but he could sense Vader’s roiling emotions in the Force. Desire, and anger, and a roiling pain tangled up in despair, bricked over by years of deliberate forgetfulness. For some reason, they had come to the forefront now.

_I know you_ , Obi-Wan thought, but what he didn’t know was why. “Cody, protect the Senator,” he ordered without looking back, and slammed his fist into the door control to shut and lock it, ignoring Padmé’s cry of protest.

He plucked his lightsaber from his belt and ignited it. His earlier uncertainty crystallized into calm determination. “Shall we make this easy, Darth Vader?” he said. “You still have time to surrender.”

“You should not have brought her here,” Vader said, his voice dark with malice. His own lightsaber was blood-red, its blade reflected in the transparisteel windows of the conference room. Beyond them Obi-Wan could see the showers of lava spit up by the planet’s unceasing volcanic activity.

“I’ll take that as a no.” He took one side of the conference room, Vader the other, and they circled the table warily. “We’ll do this the hard way, then.”

“The easy way was never an option.”

“Oh, I like to keep my options open,” Obi-Wan said. “So if at any point you get tired – your life support gets a bit overtaxed, perhaps – you just let me know.”

“My master said that he wanted you alive, old man,” said Vader. “He did not say he wanted you whole.”

“If you want to impress me, you’ll have to come up with something original,” Obi-Wan said, dropped his free hand to the back of a chair, and vaulted over the table, taking Vader in the chest with a flying kick, which barely staggered the Sith. Obi-Wan flipped backwards, landing on the table, and felt body memory spark through him. _I’ve been here before_ , he thought, and then there was no time for thinking.

Red and blue lightsabers met in a flash of blinding light, disengaging almost immediately. Within seconds the conference table was little more than smoking splinters as Obi-Wan and Vader dueled across the room. Obi-Wan ducked a chair that Vader sent threw at him with the Force, cutting a second in two with his lightsaber, and said, “You’ll have to do better than that, Vader!”

In response, Vader thrust his free hand out, shattering the transparisteel windows and sending Obi-Wan flying through them. He rolled in mid-air, driving his lightsaber into the black glass shore to slow him as he landed and slid back towards the lava bank. He could feel the planet’s heat on his skin, the poisonous vapors thick in the air, and armored himself against both with the Force.

Vader leapt out after him, his cloak rising behind him like the wings of a giant bat, and strode towards him with his lightsaber outstretched. Somewhere in the distance, Obi-Wan could hear blasterfire; the alert on his comlink was blinking frantically, but Obi-Wan couldn’t spare the attention to find out what it was.

“It will end here, my old master,” said Vader, his lightsaber crackling as it swung down in a blazing red arc. Obi-Wan met it with his own, and they were at it again, fighting up and down the shores of the fiery river.

Vader was good. Vader was very good, and he fought as if he and Obi-Wan had crossed blades a thousand times instead of merely once. He wasn’t as fast as Obi-Wan, nor as flexible, but he was stronger. Not only that, he seemed to anticipate Obi-Wan’s every move.

_As if we’ve done this before_ , Obi-Wan thought, barely managing to parry a blow that should by right have cut him in two. He threw himself into a series of backflips, wanting the bare seconds to reconsider his options – his preference was for calling in an airstrike, but that clearly wasn’t possible. He was in midair when the Force rang, as though some cosmic giant had tossed a stone into a pool the size of the universe. It broke Obi-Wan out of the backflip, sending him tumbling down in a graceless fall.

Vader was there almost immediately, a kick sending Obi-Wan’s lightsaber out of his hand and tumbling out of sight. Obi-Wan rolled aside, barely avoiding his downward blow, and thrust out his hand for his lightsaber, pulling it back a split-second later in order to avoid losing it. He slammed his foot into Vader’s thigh, shouting in pain when it connected with a durasteel prosthesis underneath the armor.

Vader kicked him in the jaw, hard enough that Obi-Wan saw stars, and planted a booted foot on his chest. He raised his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan thrust both hands up, the Force shimmering between them as he shoved Vader’s blade. He could feel the heat of the black glass sand crisping his hair, burning the back of his neck and scorching his tunic.

“Give up,” Vader said, “you are no match for the powers of the Dark Side. I am the master now, old man!”

“Only a master of evil, Darth!” Obi-Wan spat. “Is that what you said to Anakin Skywalker?”

With a muted roar of rage, Vader disengaged and sent Obi-Wan tumbling backwards with a push of the Force. Obi-Wan dug one hand into the ground to slow his slide, snapping his free hand out for his lightsaber, barely getting it ignited in time to beat off Vader’s relentless attack.

“Where is he?” he shouted over the clash of lightsabers and the roar of the river of flame. “What did you do with him? _Where is Anakin Skywalker?_ ”

“You old fool!” Vader said. “ _I_ am Anakin Skywalker.”

Obi-Wan froze.

Vader backhanded him viciously, sending Obi-Wan stumbling back, one hand coming up reflexively to wipe the blood from his mouth. “Liar!”

“You were the one who made me this, my master,” Vader spat, driving him backwards. “You should know.”

Obi-Wan parried his blows, aware that he was being driven back towards the river of lava. “It isn’t possible! You’re lying!”

“This is the end for you, my master.” Vader seemed to have forgotten his earlier desire to take Obi-Wan prisoner. He caught Obi-Wan a blow across the face a second time, knocking his lightsaber out of his hand.

Obi-Wan held his ground, his hands outstretched and the Force humming around him. He could feel Vader straining against him, the Force caught between them – two minds nearly identical in strength and power, Jedi and Sith, and brothers once. “No,” Obi-Wan spat, breathing hard. “It isn’t true. I don’t believe it!”

“I was Anakin Skywalker,” said Vader. “And you made me Darth Vader, my master.”

Someone slammed into Vader from the side, a blur of golden hair and dark clothing that sent the Sith lord tumbling down, perilously near the riverside. Obi-Wan threw himself into a backflip, calling his lightsaber to his hand as he landed, ready to face this new threat.

Anakin Skywalker rolled to his feet like some great feline predator, flicking his lightsaber sideways as his blade ignited. It gleamed blue in the fire-lit darkness, reflecting off something metallic on his left wrist. “Not in this lifetime,” he said.


	9. The Revenge of the Sith

The first thing that Anakin realized when he regained consciousness was that his hair was on fire.

He sat up with a yelp, batting at the back of his head, which fortunately turned out to be just slightly singed rather than a mess of flames. The reason why became immediately evident as he scrambled to his feet, staring around.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said out loud.

After today, he would probably know this planet in his dreams. Standing here now made his fists clench and his heart ache, waves of secondhand agony washing over him in borrowed memory. From his position at the top of a hill, he could see rivers of flame, lava leaping up in reddish-orange arcs to bounce off the slightly luminescent shields that protected the mining facilities. In the distance, Anakin could hear the sound of blasterfire.

Mustafar.

Slowly, Anakin reached down to retrieve his – Obi-Wan’s – fallen lightsaber, which had slipped out of his hand. The Ouroboros was lying beside it, deceptively innocent looking against the black glass sands of the hillside. Anakin picked it up, feeling it hum faintly against his ungloved fingers before ceasing entirely. He slapped it against his knee.

“Take me back,” he ordered. “Take me back, blast you! I can’t just leave him there.”

The Ouroboros sat quiescent in his hand, flames reflected in the scarlet gems of the serpent’s eyes.

“What good are you if you won’t even work when I want you to?” Anakin snapped, feeling his lips skin back from his teeth in a snarl. For lack of anything better to do with it, he slipped the bracelet over his wrist, the black metal warm from the sands it had been lying on. Anakin could barely feel it in the Force, as if the energy required for the transition from one timeline to the other had drained it somehow.

“I’m going to kill him myself when I get back,” Anakin said, straightening up. He flipped the lightsaber over in his hand, accustoming himself to the unfamiliar hilt. When he had been a padawan Obi-Wan had made him train with a variety of different lightsabers, including his own, but that had been a long time ago.

After a moment’s hesitation, he turned towards the direction from which he could still hear the sound of blasterfire. If there was shooting going on, that was where he wanted to be.

He scrambled over the hill, slipping on his way down and catching himself with one hand on the burning soil. Automatically he layered the Force over himself to protect himself from the planet’s heat, from the poisonous fumes that rose from the rivers of lava down below. A haze lay over the planet’s surface, obscuring his view for more than a few hundred yards in either direction. Anakin hadn’t been walking for more than five minutes when a pair of white-armored figures rose out of the gloom in front of him.

He stopped, his hand dropping to his lightsaber. More stormtroopers – as if almost two months of either running from them or killing them at every opportunity hadn’t been enough.

“Freeze! Put your hands where we can see them!”

Anakin knew that voice. “Friendly!” he shouted back, and for emphasis unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and ignited it, waving it so that they could see the gleaming blue blade.

The two clones came running forward, blaster rifles still raised until they were close enough to recognize him. “General Skywalker? Sir, is that really you?”

“Jesse, Tup,” Anakin said, deactivating his blade. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you two!”

“You too, sir,” Tup said. He slipped his helmet off so that he could stare at Anakin with what looked uncomfortably like suspicion. “The general said you were too stubborn to kill!”

“General – Obi-Wan’s here?” Anakin swung around to look at the hellish landscape around him, his heart nearly stopping. “Obi-Wan’s _here_?”

“Sir, we’d better get you back to Captain Rex, get a medic to check you out –” They were gently steering him back in the direction they had come from.

“What are you doing with General Kenobi?” Anakin demanded. Although the 501st worked with Obi-Wan’s battalion fairly often, as a general matter of course they didn’t technically come directly under his command. But he’d far rather his men were with Obi-Wan than with some lunatic like Pong Krell. “Is he in charge of the Five-Oh-First now?”

“Sort of,” Jesse said. “The Five-Oh-First doesn’t exist anymore. General Kenobi pulled strings to get us all transferred to the Two-Twelfth after the Battle of Odryn, otherwise we would have been broken up and scattered through the rest of the GAR.”

“ _What?_ ”

“We had a sixty percent casualty rate on Odryn, General. Not enough men left to sustain a full battalion.”

Anakin felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Sixty percent?” he repeated. “But –”

Obi-Wan, the other Obi-Wan, had called their deployment on Odryn “uneventful,” and that was certainly how Anakin remembered it up until the moment when he had picked up the Ouroboros. But that was in a world where a general hadn’t vanished in the middle of an engagement, only to be replaced with a Sith lord. If that was what had happened here.

_I left my men_ , Anakin realized, sick. He’d never considered that before – had never thought about what had happened on Odryn after the Ouroboros had sent him into the future. He’d abandoned his men – abandoned Obi-Wan, in the midst of an engagement on a hostile planet. People had died because he hadn’t been there. And that was even if Darth Vader hadn’t appeared in his place.

Jesse was still talking. “We had to withdraw too quickly to look for survivors, but the general always said you were too stubborn to let a little thing like a bomb kill you –”

“What?” Anakin said. “What bomb?”

Tup frowned at him. “Don’t you remember, sir?”

“It’s all pretty much a blur,” Anakin lied weakly. “Did you say with –”

There was a burst of blasterfire far too close for comfort. Tup and Jesse hit the deck, dragging Anakin down between them. Tup pulled his helmet back on, barking out an order for covering fire at their location. The deep boom of AT-TE cannon sounded an instant later. Anakin and the two clones scrambled to their feet, Anakin igniting his lightsaber as he did so.

The Force whispered a warning a bare instant before half a dozen STAPs loomed out of the darkness, each mounted by a battle droid. Tup and Jesse started firing immediately, Anakin deflecting the bolts back. He flung himself up when the STAPs were close enough, bouncing off one STAP as he decapitated its droid rider to slash another one in two, landing in a crouch on the ground as the remaining STAPs went down in a hail of blasted metal. Three more clones ran out of the gloom, one of them wearing the distinctive pauldrons and kama of an ARC trooper.

“General Kenobi! We thought –”

He stopped and peered more closely at Anakin. “General Skywalker?”

“Hi, Rex,” Anakin said. “You miss me?”

“We just found him wandering around, sir,” Jesse said quickly.

“Get him under cover,” Rex ordered, pointing over his shoulder. “Jax, Harper, take their patrol.”

The two clones who had accompanied him vanished in the direction they had just come from, and Rex joined Jesse and Tup in shepherding Anakin back towards the AT-TEs. As they came into view, Anakin could see that they were spread out along a ridgeline overlooking the manufacturing complex, currently under heavy fire from Separatist troops. A group of clones came rushing out to cover them as they retreated back beneath the AT-TEs.

“I’m fine, I’m not hurt, just knocked around a little,” Anakin said, waving off a medic. “Where is General Kenobi? And our air support? Give me a sit rep, Captain.”

“No air support; fighter squadrons are tied up protecting the _Resolute_ from the Sep fleet that just came out of hyperspace. Cody and two squadrons are pinned down in the mining complex with the senator; gunships are destroyed but they’re holding the building for now. Last we heard, General Kenobi and the enemy general were engaged in single combat.”

“Grievous? Dooku?”

Rex paused, staring at him. “Darth Vader,” he said.

*

Anakin stared at him in stunned horror. _This is some kind of sick cosmic joke_. The memory of Vader’s killing rage was bitter on his tongue, secondhand Force echoes filtered through Obi-Wan’s desperate grief. _Oh, stars, he’s going to kill him. Or worse, he’s going to tell him,_ then _kill him._

Rex was still talking, but Anakin couldn’t hear a word that he had just said. He grabbed the clone’s shoulder and said, “Where?”

“General?”

“ _Where is he_?” Anakin shouted.

He heard too late the Force compulsion layered into his voice, but by then Rex was already pointing. “General, I’m sure General Kenobi’s got the situation under control –”

“No, he doesn’t,” Anakin said, backing away. He snatched his lightsaber from his belt. “He’s got no idea who he’s up against.”

He dodged Jesse’s grab and went sliding between the legs of the nearest AT-TE, breaking into a run as soon as he was clear. He could hear Rex yelling behind him, telling the gunners to hold their fire, but he didn’t pay any attention to it.

They weren’t far away. They were down by the bank of one of the rivers of lava, blue and red lightsabers flashing as they dueled. Anakin didn’t hesitate for an instant, just went skidding down the hill. He saw Vader strike Obi-Wan across the face, saw Obi-Wan lose his lightsaber, and felt the Force rise between them, a solid wall of energy humming at Obi-Wan’s fingertips as he held Vader off. They were shouting at each other.

“I was Anakin Skywalker,” he heard Vader say in his deep, mechanized voice, filtered through his helmet. “And you made me Darth Vader, my master.”

Anakin hit him from the side, not bothering with any kind of finesse or even with his lightsaber. Vader, unprepared for the attack, went sprawling; Anakin bounced back to his feet and ignited his lightsaber. “Not in this lifetime.”

Obi-Wan’s sheer relief overwhelmed the Force for an instant; he had his lightsaber back in hand, prowling nervously close to cover Anakin’s weak side as Vader rose to his feet.

“You are Anakin Skywalker.”

“And you’re a traitor and a murderer,” Anakin said. He put out a hand to keep Obi-Wan back, the Ouroboros glinting from his wrist. “I know all about you, Darth Vader. I know what you did – what you are. Who you are.”

Vader’s hatred drove into his mind – not just for Obi-Wan, but for Anakin himself. Anakin realized, for the first time, that he was looking at himself. It wasn’t like looking into a mirror, not physically, because there was almost nothing organic left of Vader – nothing to see, at least. But he could sense Vader’s mind, and the horrible thing was that he recognized it. It was as though someone had taken all the worst pieces of himself and reorganized them into the worst possible combination.

_Obi-Wan was right. He isn’t insane. He just wishes he was._

“You know nothing, boy.” Vader’s voice was dark with disdain, though most of the emotion came through in the Force rather than his inflections. There wasn’t much variety possible given the vocoder that did the work of his irreparably damaged vocal cords. “Nothing of the Jedi, nothing of the Dark Side, and nothing of me!”

“I know enough,” Anakin said. “I’ve been in the Jedi Temple. I’ve seen what you did – the children you murdered. Your brothers and sisters, Sith! What you did to Obi-Wan and Padmé here, on this world! How could you?” he spat, and for a moment his own rage was thick in his throat. Obi-Wan dropped a hand to his shoulder, squeezing.

“You know nothing!” said Vader.

“I know you murdered your own people!” Anakin shouted. “You were a Jedi. You had Obi-Wan and Padmé and the whole Order behind you. Why would you do it? What could the Sith offer you that you didn’t already have? I never wanted anything else! I just wanted them! And you killed them!”

He felt Obi-Wan’s shock run through the Force, but his hand was steady on Anakin’s shoulder, his grip unwavering.

“You will never understand, Jedi.”

“You’re right, I am a Jedi!” Anakin yelled. “I made my choice! I passed the test that you failed, in the world that you made, in the graveyard of our people! Why did you do it? _Why_?”

Vader took a step forward. Anakin flicked his lightsaber up, automatically putting the blade between himself and the Sith lord. “A true Jedi would never understand.”

“ _We’re the same blasted person, you son of a sarlacc_!” Anakin screamed, the strain tearing at his already abraded throat. “If anyone can understand, it’s me! Obi-Wan didn’t understand and it destroyed him, so tell me! _Tell me why you did it_!”

“Because of Padmé!” said Vader. “I had visions – visions of her death, visions of her in agony. My master told me that only the Sith had the power to save her. My master told me – I had no choice!”

“There is always a choice.” Obi-Wan’s voice was deceptively light, but hearing it sent a spark of surprise through both Anakin and Vader. They had forgotten that he was there.

There was a hiss as he deactivated his lightsaber, releasing Anakin’s shoulder. “You’re the one who’s been stalking Senator Amidala and sending me murdered Jedi?” he said. “Both of us thought that the Separatists had captured Anakin on Odryn, brainwashed him into fighting for them – but I never thought it was you. We were right, after a fashion.”

Vader’s attention shifted to Obi-Wan. “You will not take her from me twice, Obi-Wan.”

“Padmé Amidala is her own woman. She does as she pleases with whom she pleases,” Obi-Wan said. He moved away from Anakin, enough that they both had room to maneuver. Despite his relatively slow pace, something about the careful, deliberate way he did it made him look like a predator – like one of the most dangerous beings in the galaxy. “You knew that the day that she took you as her lover. You knew that she never wanted to be saved – she’s more than capable of saving herself. She would not thank you for committing murder in her name.”

“I’m sure she wasn’t too pleased with you murdering her, either,” Anakin spat.

Obi-Wan made a slight gesture at him, barely more than two fingers twitching on the hilt of his lightsaber, but it was enough. Anakin fell silent, moving on soft feet to flank Vader. _I hope you know what you’re doing, old man._

Vader’s head turned as he tried to watch them both. Anakin saw his own face reflected in the dark lenses that served as eyes for the helmet and had to look away, sickened.

“You know nothing about her, old man,” Vader rumbled. “And you know nothing about me.”

“Perhaps I don’t know much,” Obi-Wan said. “But I know the most important thing. I know that you are Anakin Skywalker. And Anakin Skywalker I know.”

Anakin turned to stare at him disbelievingly.

“Anakin Skywalker is dead, you fool,” said Vader. “I killed him twenty-two years ago. Only I remain.”

Obi-Wan slipped his lightsaber back onto his belt and raised his empty hands. “You cannot kill yourself and remain among the living, my friend,” he said. “You have allowed yourself to be twisted and corrupted by the Dark Side until you have convinced yourself that the good man who is Anakin Skywalker no longer exists. But he is still within you. There is still good in you, no matter how deeply you have tried to bury it. You are a Jedi, Anakin, a being of light. And no matter how dim or how low it flickers, the light will always hold back the dark.”

Vader ignited his lightsaber. “You are a fool, Obi-Wan. You have no idea how many Jedi I have killed.”

“I know that there have been at least seventeen,” Obi-Wan said. “You sent me their heads. An interesting choice. Was that your master’s idea or yours?”

Vader was silent for a long moment. “My master,” he said at last, “does not want you dead anymore. My master underestimates you.”

“I’m flattered,” Obi-Wan said. “Anakin, look at what you’re doing. Look at where you are. You are a Jedi, and you are my friend –”

It was the wrong thing to say, but there was no way that Obi-Wan could have known that. Vader rushed forward; Obi-Wan dodged backwards, starting to reach for his lightsaber before stopping. “Anakin, I won’t fight you!” he said. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to strike me down unarmed.”

“You underestimate me!” Vader said. He flung out one hand, sending Anakin flying backwards as he moved to intercept him. Anakin landed only feet from the riverbank, flipping back to his feet before the heat from the lava had the chance to ignite his clothes.

“I killed you once, old man, I will do it again.”

“Then do it,” Obi-Wan said. “Kill me, Anakin. Strike me down like you murdered those seventeen Jedi whose heads you delivered to me.” He spread his hands. “I don’t think you’ll do it.”

Against his left wrist, Anakin felt the Ouroboros begin to hum. It blossomed into life within his mind – the two snakes twisted together, devouring their own tails for all eternity, and binding them the tiny spark of his own soul that the Sith lord Jorl Muungar had placed within the relic millennia ago. All at once, he understood – not everything, but enough.

He deactivated his lightsaber.

Vader was almost within striking distance of Obi-Wan. “I am the greatest Jedi killer this sorry universe has ever seen.”

“You are Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight of the Republic, the boy that I raised and trained, the best friend I have ever had, and the man that I love like a brother,” Obi-Wan said. “If you’re so eager to kill me, then do it. Do it now!”

“Anakin Skywalker is dead!” Vader said. “As you will be soon, my old master –”

“Not yet,” Anakin snarled from behind him. He raised his empty hands as Vader turned, his lightsaber rising to strike him down. The Force, coiled in his mind and in the writhing snakes of the Ouroboros, released.

*

The resulting explosion of compressed energy sent them flying backwards. Anakin hit the slope hard enough that all he could do was lie stunned for a few seconds, his entire body reeling from the sheer mass of released Force energy. He’d never been on the receiving end of it before.

After a moment, the smell of his crisping hair – not _again_ – got him to stagger back to his feet. His hand went automatically to the lightsaber on his waist, making sure that it was still clipped to his belt as he looked around.

Vader was nowhere in sight, but Obi-Wan was picking himself painfully off the ground not far away, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand. He looked up as Anakin approached, his familiar features relaxing into a smile.

“Is he gone?”

“He’s gone,” Anakin said. “For good, I hope.” He offered Obi-Wan his hand; to his surprise, Obi-Wan pulled him into a crushing hug, pressing one hand to the back of Anakin’s head. It was the single most expressive display of affection that Obi-Wan had ever shown.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he breathed. “Where in blazes have you been?”

“Stopped for coffee, what do you think?” Anakin grinned, relaxing into the embrace. He folded his fists hard against Obi-Wan’s back, burying his face in Obi-Wan’s charred-smelling shoulder.

“I thought you were dead. Or worse.”

“I think you just saw the worse,” Anakin muttered. “But that’s not me. It’s never _going_ to be.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said. His hand lingered in Anakin’s hair for a moment before he released him. “I had to try, Anakin.”

“Jedi,” Anakin said fondly.

He was about to say more when blasterfire splintered the air around them. Anakin and Obi-Wan flung themselves away from each other, their lightsabers leaping into their hands.

“Destroyers!” Obi-Wan warned, landing in a crouch. His blade flickered out, a blinding blue blur as he deflected the bolts harmlessly back against the droidekas’ shielding.

“Yeah, I can see that!” Anakin shouted back. “I knew there was something I _wasn’t_ missing about being home!”

“Perhaps this will teach you to reconsider taking unannounced vacations!” Obi-Wan flung his hand out, the Force spinning one destroyer around to fire on its companions. Taking advantage of the momentary confusion this caused, Anakin launched himself forward, deactivating his lightsaber as he slid down through the droidekas’ shields before igniting it again, cleaving the destroyer in half. With another sweep of the Force, Obi-Wan threw the remaining droidekas into the river of lava just as Captain Rex and a squadron of clones came over the hill.

The reason for their delay in following Anakin was made apparent by the small army of battle droids immediately behind them. The clones were moving backwards, flanked by a pair of walkers, firing the entire time, but the superior numbers of the droids were slowly winnowing them down.

“I’ve been back for five minutes,” Anakin said disbelievingly, but he didn’t hesitate.

With Vader gone, the Force had cleared; Anakin and Obi-Wan were open to each other, their intentions clear in their minds. They didn’t move like separate individuals, but as one, dashing forward, vaulting over the heads of the incoming clone troopers to land amidst the battle droids.

Even a battalion of battle droids was no match for a pair of Jedi working in concert, backed up by clone troopers. Within minutes Anakin and Obi-Wan were standing alone amidst a pile of dismembered droid parts, breathing heavily.

“Is that my lightsaber?” Obi-Wan asked, frowning at him.

“Sort of,” Anakin said. “It’s a long story.”

Obi-Wan nodded, wiping sweat off his face. “Captain, sit rep,” he ordered.

Captain Rex stepped carefully through the mess of droid parts. “Fives and Shadow Company are mopping up the rest of them over at point Five-Six-A,” he said. “Cody reports that they’re still pinned down in the complex. The Senator’s unharmed, but droids are about to break through. _Resolute_ and the fighters are tied up with a Sep battle group that came out of hyperspace after we landed; last I heard they were taking heavy fire but managing to hold them off.”

Obi-Wan’s expression was grim. “Well, we can’t do anything for the _Resolute_. Get your men, let’s go give Cody a hand. The last thing we need to make this delightful excursion even more fun is a dead senator.”

“What, you don’t think I’m a delight?” Anakin said lightly.

Obi-Wan gave him a fond look, some of his tension releasing. “‘Delight’ is not exactly the word I would choose.”

“Really? I like it.”

Rex cleared his throat. “What about Darth Vader, sir?”

“Oh,” Anakin said, “he’s not going to be a problem ever again.”

*

The sound of blasterfire abated for a moment as Commander Cody dropped back down beside her, slapping another charge pack into his blaster and tossing one to Padmé. “Roger that, Rex,” he said, then turned towards him. “Backup’s on the way, milady. General Kenobi’s taken care of Vader and he’s on his way back with a squad.”

Padmé let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Good,” she said, sliding the power pack into her blaster. She twisted around and up onto her knees, firing over the holotable at the droids that had already cut through the first set of blast doors leading into the complex. The room’s internal shields – backup if the external shielding that protected the complex from the lava flows failed – were holding them off for now, but according to R2-D2 they wouldn’t last much longer.

A scratching sound from the closed door to the conference room made her look over her shoulder. Cody followed her line of sight and said shortly, “Droids are placing charges. No secondary shielding there. We’ve got maybe another thirty seconds.”

He made a gesture at his men, several of whom split off from their positions elsewhere in the room to settle down in a half circle around the conference room door. Captain Typho, on Padmé’s other side, said, “This could end badly, my lady.”

“Obi-Wan will get here in time,” Padmé assured him.

Typho’s face was grim. “I hope so, my lady.”

“Don’t worry,” Cody said. “Last minute rescues are the General’s specialty”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Typho said.

“Door’s going, Commander!” called one of the clones.

“Hit the deck!” Cody bellowed.

Typho shoved Padmé ungracefully down with hand between her shoulder blades, throwing himself over her as the conference door exploded inwards. The blasterfire started immediately as the clones reacted; the remainder of Padmé’s Naboo guards were tied up protecting the main entrance. She could hear the splashy sound of the shields weakening even over the blasterfire and the metallic advance of the assassin droids coming in from the conference room.

Typho let go of Padmé to resume firing. She straightened up, trying to remember what Anakin had told her about killing assassin droids, and took the first headshot she had. The droid dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, but there were a dozen more behind it, pouring in through the conference room doorway and overwhelming the clones and Naboo guards.

_Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea,_ Padmé thought, trying to line up another headshot. The blast missed as the droid moved, splattering uselessly against the wall behind it. _Come on, Obi-Wan, you’ve never let me down before, don’t start now –_

As if summoned, a gleaming blue lightsaber blade impaled the foremost assassin droid from behind and slashed up, severing its torso in two. Obi-Wan freed his blade and swept sideways, kicking the nearest droid in the head before cutting its legs off.

For a moment Padmé couldn’t believe her eyes as a second Jedi came in through the smoking remains of the conference room door, catching the doorframe in his free hand as he swung around, knocking a droid into range of Obi-Wan’s blade. He leapt down, his blade slashing around in a blinding blue blur, until he and Obi-Wan were back to back, making short work of the remaining assassin droids. The sound of blasterfire came from the landing platform as Captain Rex’s clones cleared the remaining battle droids away from the main door.

Obi-Wan deactivated his blade and offered Padmé his hand. “Are you all right, Senator?”

She let him help her to her feet, staring over his shoulder, too shocked to speak.

Anakin looked rather the worse for wear, but not nearly as bad off as some of the recovered prisoners of war she had seen before. He was wearing civilian clothes, scorched and charred from contact with the planet’s lethal surface, and the lightsaber hilt in his hand was clearly not his own. He looked at her with wide eyes, taking half a step forward before he stopped himself.

Obi-Wan released her, looking back and forth between them with a faint line between his brows. He looked as if he’d taken quite a beating, with blood dried on his face and a fresh black eye, but he smiled as he said, “Apparently, Jesse and Tup found him just wandering around.”

“General, I’ve got Admiral Yularen for you,” Cody called.

“I’ll take that,” Obi-Wan said, stepping around Padmé.

Anakin moved towards her as if in a dream, holding out his hands. “Pad – I mean, Senator Amidala,” he said. “Obi-Wan didn’t tell me you were here.”

“It probably slipped his mind,” Padmé said, letting her hands rest lightly in his. She felt his fingers twitch against hers, but he didn’t make any attempt to hold on. All she wanted was to throw herself into his arms, but she couldn’t – not with Obi-Wan and his clones here, never mind her own people. Of course, Obi-Wan knew, as did most of her guards, but they couldn’t take the risk. All it would take was one wrong word to the Jedi Council or the Supreme Chancellor.

“Are you –” She swallowed, her voice trembling. “Are you hurt? You were being held prisoner here?”

“Um –” His gaze darted over her shoulder towards Obi-Wan, who was speaking to Admiral Yularen on a handheld holoprojector. “I’m not hurt. The other thing – it’s complicated.”

Carefully, Padmé touched a finger to the unfamiliar bracelet on his left wrist. “This is new.”

He jerked his hand back, covering the bracelet with his gloved hand. “That’s complicated too,” he said quickly.

“Senator, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, strolling back. “Admiral Yularen reports that the Separatist fleet has disengaged and jumped back into hyperspace. He’s sending gunships down to pick us up. ARC trooper Fives says that they’ve mopped up the last of the Sep troops. Since I think at this point we can comfortably assumed that this was a Separatist trap rather than an unarmed weapons plant, I see no reason to stick around further.”

“Weapons plant?” Anakin said, glancing around. He flinched slightly, as though physically pained by the sight of the ruined ops room. “What kind of weapons?”

“According to Chancellor Palpatine’s informant, something large enough to destroy an entire planet at once. Patently ridiculous, of course –”

Anakin lunged past Padmé and caught Obi-Wan by the shoulder. “Palpatine sent you here?” he demanded, his voice rising in alarm. “Both of you? To Vader?”

Obi-Wan blinked at him in surprise. “Just me. Senator Amidala brought herself.”

“The Chancellor agreed that my accompanying you was appropriate,” Padmé put in, surprised by the urgency in Anakin’s voice.

“And it could have been any Jedi, I was just the only Knight available…” Obi-Wan trailed off as he frowned at Anakin. “What is it? Tell me.”

“The only person that Vader hates more than himself is _you_ ,” Anakin said. “Palpatine didn’t send you here because you were convenient, he sent you here because you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader must have gone to him when he first arrived here, told him what had happened in his own timeline, and Palpatine’s been using him as muscle ever since – he’s probably been playing him and Dooku against each other.” He was talking fast, his words tumbling over each other, but at this he paused and looked at Obi-Wan.

Padmé looked at him too, frowning. Until a few hours ago, she hadn’t even known that Darth Vader existed, although like the rest of the Senate she had heard unverified rumors of the Separatists’ murderous new general. But the rest of what Anakin was saying sounded mad.

“We’ve heard things from Republic intelligence,” Obi-Wan said slowly. “Vader does – did – what Dooku ordered, but they disagreed about the execution, among other things.”

Anakin nodded, running a hand through his scorched-looking hair. “I know – sort of – how Palpatine thinks. He set this trap for both of you – if you could kill him, or if he could kill you – he probably would have been happy with either one. And Padmé coming just made it even better for him.”

“Anakin, breathe,” Obi-Wan said firmly, catching Anakin by his upper arms and forcing him to look at him. “Slow down and explain clearly. I know the Supreme Chancellor has never been fond of me, but I doubt that he would deliberately send me into a Separatist trap.”

“But he’s –” Anakin began, then stopped abruptly, his gaze flickering back and forth between Obi-Wan and Padmé, and then, surprisingly, to the clone troopers.

Padmé could see him trembling violently. His hands came up to grip Obi-Wan’s wrists, staring into his friend’s eyes as though by doing so, he could tell Obi-Wan what he knew by sheer will. Well, they were Jedi. Maybe he could.

“You _know_ why,” Anakin said at last. “Obi-Wan, you have to know.”

“Anakin, take a breath,” Obi-Wan instructed. “Tell me what you mean. Start from the beginning.”

Anakin’s gaze darted towards Padmé. “I – I can’t,” he said. “Not here.”

“Then tell me when we’re back on the _Resolute_ ,” Obi-Wan said crisply. “We’re twenty hours in hyperspace back to Coruscant, we’ve got the time.”

“But people are going to _die_ , Master! Jedi are going to die!”

Obi-Wan stilled, then, with visible effort, said, “Immediately?”

Anakin’s gaze flickered sideways, but he wasn’t really looking at anything. Padmé had seen that expression before – on Anakin, on Obi-Wan, on other Jedi. As though they saw something beyond themselves, staring off into some other world. “No,” Anakin said at last. “I mean – not more than usual.”

“Then you have the time to eat something and shower and assure the medics that you aren’t in any immediate physical danger,” Obi-Wan told him. “And then you can tell me.”

“I’m not hurt,” Anakin said, sounding grumpy. “I just got knocked around and fried a little. I wasn’t actually –”

“Yes, but that’s what the report’s going to say,” Obi-Wan said soothingly. He freed himself from Anakin’s death-grip and cupped one hand over the back of Anakin’s skull, tipping their foreheads together.

Anakin released a deep, shuddering breath, the sound nearly lost in the rush of displaced air as the gunships set down on the landing platform outside. He leaned forward against Obi-Wan as if depending on his friend to hold him up, still trembling violently.

Padmé looked away, feeling as though she was intruding on something private. She could tell, even without the ability to sense the Force, that there was something unseen passing between Anakin and Obi-Wan. More than ever before she was aware that they were bound together in a way that she would never be able to understand – the reason that made Anakin sometimes smile without any outside provocation, that had made Obi-Wan so certain that Anakin was still alive against all proof.

_Jedi_ , she thought, and felt, obscurely, empty. Binding Anakin and Obi-Wan was the Force, great and terrible and utterly beyond her comprehension, and all that Padmé had to bind him to her were the promises they had made that day on Naboo.

Padmé stepped back, into Sabé’s comforting hand on her elbow, hoping that none of that had been made clear on her face. _He’s alive_ , she whispered to herself. _He’s alive, nothing else matters. As long as he lives, we’re safe._

She was still close enough to hear Anakin say miserably, “He sent you here for Vader to kill. Both of you.”

“Very likely,” Obi-Wan said. His tanned hand was still dark amidst Anakin’s scorched hair. “But neither of us is dead.”

Anakin’s voice was soft. “Not yet.”

*

Jedi had more endurance than most ordinary beings, but whatever Anakin had been through since he had vanished on Odryn – though Obi-Wan had the inarticulate impression from his mind that the worst of it had only come in the past day – had left him exhausted. The events on Mustafar had wrung almost every last drop of his reserves from him, so that on the gunship back to the _Resolute_ he leaned heavily against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, shivering from his overuse of the Force. Obi-Wan could feel the parts of his mind that controlled the Force, a little scorched from whatever he had done to Darth Vader; Anakin was strong enough to handle it, but unused to doing so.

Admiral Yularen, as unflappable as ever, took Anakin’s reappearance in stride. Like Padmé and the clones, he seemed to assume that Anakin had been held prisoner on Mustafar and escaped in the chaos of the fighting; Obi-Wan saw no reason to disabuse any of them of this notion. After a cursory stop in the infirmary to check in on the injured clones – Anakin, predictably, shrugged off any suggestion that he ought to get checked out by a medic – Obi-Wan shepherded him to the officers’ mess to eat something, then to the showers to wash off Mustafar’s muck. He had had so little time between deployments that Anakin’s gear was still packed in the cabin they usually shared.

Back in his Jedi robes, with his lightsaber clipped on his belt, Anakin settled down on his rack. Obi-Wan watched him with narrowed eyes, taking in the stiff, cautious way that he moved. He’d seen the bruises in the showers – more damage than Anakin should have sustained merely from their fight with Vader. There were faint echoes in the Force reverberating through the bond between them, legacy of whatever had happened to Anakin while he had been missing.

“Now,” Obi-Wan began, sitting tailor-style on his own rack. “Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened on –”

There was a knock on the door.

Anakin’s head shot up, his eyes brightening and going shadowed again in almost the same instant. “It’s Padmé,” he said unnecessarily. He made to get up before Obi-Wan waved him down, going to open the door himself.

Anakin’s hand slapped over his as he reached for the control. “Don’t!” he said. “She can’t – I don’t want her to know. You know why.”

“Anakin, you made your bed, you have to lie in it,” Obi-Wan said, which in retrospect probably wasn’t the best choice of words. “She’s spent the past eight weeks thinking that you were dead.”

He shook his head, his expression slightly panicked. “I’ll tell her the truth. Later. Not now, I can’t – this is Jedi business, Obi-Wan, you know that, and she isn’t a Jedi.” He gave Obi-Wan a miserable look. “Please send her away. She’ll understand if you do it.”

There was another light tap on the door.

“All right,” Obi-Wan agreed, resting a hand lightly on his arm. “Go sit back down before you fall down.”

He waited until Anakin was back on his rack, drooping sleepily over himself, before he let the door slide open. Padmé was waiting outside, looking anxious. “Now isn’t a good time, Senator,” Obi-Wan said before she had a chance to speak, shifting his position so that he blocked her view of the room.

“I just want to see him, Obi-Wan. Just for a moment.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible right now.”

Her eyes widened. “He said that he wasn’t hurt –”

“He isn’t injured,” Obi-Wan assured her. “But he’s been through a lot, and he needs to rest.”

Padmé’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “Is it that you don’t want me to see him, or that he doesn’t want to see me?”

“Padmé, do you want the truth?” Behind him, he felt Anakin’s anxiety spike in the Force.

“Yes, of course!”

“Anakin needs to brief me on something that’s Jedi eyes only, and you aren’t a Jedi.”

“Is that _it_?”

“The rest is true too,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m sorry, Padmé. I know you want to see him, but now isn’t the time.”

She stepped back, shaking her head. “He’s in there, isn’t he? He told you to say all that.”

“I’m sorry, Padmé,” Obi-Wan repeated. “I think he will want to see you later.”

“Well, General Kenobi,” she said, staring determinedly at his chest, as if she could see Anakin through him, “when he feels up to it, give General Skywalker my regards. It isn’t every day that a Jedi Knight escapes from Separatist custody, after all.”

Obi-Wan bowed slightly, though not enough to let her see Anakin behind him. In fact, the number of times a Jedi Knight had successfully escaped from the Confederacy since the war began could be counted on two hands with fingers left over. Over half of them involved either Anakin or Obi-Wan – or both – in one way or another. “Certainly, Senator. I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.”

Padmé gave him a regal nod and turned to go. Obi-Wan let the door slide the rest of the way shut and looked back at Anakin, who was sitting hunched over with his hands laced over the back of his head.

“I’m going to catch hell for that one later,” he said.

“Really?” Obi-Wan said dryly, returning to his seat. “I think you’re quite safe, personally. It’s me I’ m worried about.”

“You?” Anakin scoffed, raising his head. “What do you have to worry about? You’re not the one who – um, I mean –”

“Don’t,” Obi-Wan said. “No more lies, Anakin. Now, tell me the truth, if you feel up to it. I assume that you weren’t really being held captive by the Separatists.”

“You thought I was a prisoner?” Anakin said. He looked like he hadn’t decided yet whether his feelings on the subject were flattered or insulted.

“The other alternative was to agree with the rest of the Council,” Obi-Wan said. “You went off the missing list and onto the KIA list a week ago. It took that long to convince the Supreme Chancellor, and even then I was offworld and unavailable when the vote was made.” He paused, looking at the startled expression on Anakin’s face. “Anakin, where _were_ you?”

Anakin shook his head slowly. “It’s a really long story,” he said. “And – I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

“We’ve got the time,” Obi-Wan said. “And after what happened with Vader, I think it would be better if you didn’t leave anything out.”

*

Anakin was right. It really was the most unbelievable story, and if Obi-Wan hadn’t been on the riverbank with both Anakin and Darth Vader, he might have been tempted to come to the same conclusion that the High Council undoubtedly would – that Anakin had been driven mad during his captivity. But Obi-Wan had been there, and he knew, with a jarring, bone-deep pain, that Anakin was telling the complete truth.

“So that’s why I thought I still sensed you in the Force,” he said after Anakin had finished, coughing around his abraded throat. “It was you, after a fashion.”

“Vader _isn’t_ me!” Anakin said indignantly.

“Do you think Darth Vader ceased being Anakin Skywalker just because he turned to the Dark Side?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Obi-Wan – I mean, the other Obi-Wan – did,” Anakin said. “He had to. It’s the only way he could live with what he did.” He hesitated. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a cruel streak?”

“Qui-Gon once said it would be my downfall,” Obi-Wan said. “Don’t change the subject, Anakin. Are you absolutely certain that Chancellor Palpatine is the second Sith lord in this universe as well as the other?”

“Yes,” Anakin said immediately. “Vader wouldn’t take orders from anyone else – he definitely wouldn’t take them from Dooku. He killed him in his own timeline, you know. It has to be Palpatine. And – why would anything be different? We’re the same, um, universe, aren’t we? At least until –” He touched the Ouroboros, glinting malignantly on his left wrist.

Obi-Wan looked at it uneasily. He didn’t like the idea of Anakin wearing that thing, but there wasn’t anything onboard the _Resolute_ equipped to safely contain it and Anakin, at least, seemed able to control it. However, as soon as they were back on Coruscant he was resolved to stick it in the deepest vault he could find in the Temple.

“That’s possible,” he said. “But – what was it your Master Yoda said about it?”

“‘He sought to undo the bonds of the Force holding in place not only time, but all the branchings on the great tree,’” Anakin quoted obediently. “I don’t know what that means, though.”

“It’s the kind of language used in some of the very old records in the Archives,” Obi-Wan said. “Philosophers have theorized for millennia that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, each one slightly different. Jedi philosophers – and Sith,” he allowed, “theorized that the Force binds them all together, and that someone strong enough in the Force, or a specially constructed artifact, could undo those bindings. Space and time aren’t very different on that level, after all. I think that must be what the Ouroboros does.”

Anakin considered this, then nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But why did it switch me and Vader the first time, back on Odryn, and not the second time? But it wasn’t the same Ouroboros,” he added, glancing at the bracelet before pulling his sleeve down to cover it.

Obi-Wan stroked his beard. “I think,” he said after a moment, “that the Ouroboros you activated on Odryn must have been damaged. Maybe in the Separatist attack, or millennia ago when it was buried – it doesn’t matter now. It must have reacted to the touch of a Jedi Knight – most Sith artifacts will, just like most Jedi artifacts will reach to the touch of a Sith. There’s usually a spark of a soul in them, like a Force ghost of their creator. Maybe it panicked and rather than allow itself to be directed, it just tried to replace you with the nearest – metaphysically speaking – Sith. The resulting backlash of energy could have caused the explosion; I’ve heard of it happening before.” Off Anakin’s sideways look, he added, “Afterwards, I had Jocasta Nu send me everything she could on known Sith and Jedi artifacts. I thought I could find an explanation…” He shook his head.

“Obi-Wan, it wasn’t your fault,” Anakin said, sitting forward. “If I hadn’t picked up the blasted thing, none of this would have happened.”

“And if it hadn’t, you would be spiraling towards the Dark Side right now and the Chancellor would still be plotting the downfall of the Republic with us none the wiser,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s done, Anakin. Don’t dwell on the past.”

Anakin sighed. “He did,” he said quietly. “The other Obi-Wan. I know he didn’t want to, but – he saw _him_ every time he looked at me, and it was killing him. And I didn’t realize it then, but – stars’ end, Obi-Wan, he loved him, he loved him more than I’ve ever loved _anything_ , and what happened twenty years ago utterly destroyed him.” He looked up suddenly, his expression startled, and Obi-Wan glanced aside.

“You should get some sleep,” he said. “We’ve still got another sixteen hours before we arrive back on Coruscant. We’ll have to switch hyperlanes in about seven hours, I can contact the rest of the Council then –”

“No!” Anakin exclaimed.

Obi-Wan looked at him in surprise. “Why not?”

“Because if I was him,” Anakin said, “I’d be listening to every Jedi-coded transmission, especially the ones sent out by Council members. _Especially_ the ones coming from the guy I just set up to be assassinated. Or captured, whichever. It isn’t safe. We have to tell them in person, and even then –” He shook his head. “They’ll just try what happened last time, and it will all happen all over again. We have to try something different.”

“Any bright ideas?”

Anakin winced. “No, but – we can’t just _leave_ him there.”

“Surely he can’t afford to play his hand too early,” Obi-Wan said. “Either Yoda and Windu will be back sooner or later, or we can arrange to rendezvous with them offworld. Until then, we sit tight and play dumb. As far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, you executed a daring escape from Separatist custody during my invasion of Mustafar.”

“What if Palpatine knows about the Ouroboros?”

“What if he does?” Obi-Wan said. “I’ll look it up in the Archives when we get back, but it doesn’t seem like it normally switches two individuals between timelines. Would Vader have lied to him about keeping you prisoner, do you think?”

“Yeah, I think – yeah,” Anakin said. “I mean, this Palpatine wasn’t his real master. He was just a cheap substitute.” He shivered. “And he really hated me, Obi-Wan. You felt it too, didn’t you? It was like he wanted to rip my heart out with his bare hands. Or what was left of them, anyway.”

Obi-Wan nodded, remembering the burning touch of that too-familiar mind against his own. The master-padawan bond between him and Anakin had bound them too, somehow. The Force was odd like that. “Do you think you can pretend to have been a Separatist prisoner?”

“I’ve _been_ a Sep prisoner,” Anakin said, wincing a little at the memory. “Yeah, I can do it. I don’t know for how long, but – yeah, I can do it. I think I know how to keep Palpatine out of my head now, as long as he doesn’t try anything like what he did before. Back in the Temple.” He lapsed quiet, his gaze going distant.

Obi-Wan could sense the faint echoes of what he had seen, flashes of Force impressions that even secondhand gripped him with the agony of those frozen moments. “Anakin,” he said, “I trust you.”

Anakin folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them. “Maybe you shouldn’t. He couldn’t.”

“I,” Obi-Wan said, “am not him. And you aren’t Vader, either.”

Anakin wouldn’t look at him. “You know, I thought he was insane when I found out – when I saw him in Obi-Wan’s memories. He had to be insane, because why else would he do that? Why would _I_ do that? But then I met him. And he wasn’t insane. And now I know what Obi-Wan didn’t know. I know why he did it.” He shook his head. “I wish he had been insane.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, crossing the tiny room to kneel down in front of him. He caught his friend’s hands in his own, feeling Anakin’s start of surprise. “If you understand why, then you can make sure not to repeat the mistake. Insanity would be too easy, my friend.”

Anakin stared down at their joined hands. “You know, that’s what he said.”

“Sounds like a wise fellow,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s a pity we can’t meet.”

Anakin huffed out a laugh. “You don’t want that. He’d break your heart.”

*

Despite Anakin’s dire warnings, Obi-Wan didn’t actually expect to be met at the shipyards by a squadron of clone troopers. Anakin, white-faced, started to reach for his lightsaber before Obi-Wan stopped him with a hand on his arm, striding forward to intercept the clone commander.

“Commander Appo, isn’t it?” he said. “Has something happened?”

Anonymous behind his helmet, Appo said, “General Kenobi, the Supreme Chancellor requests your immediate presence, along with General Skywalker and Senator Amidala.”

“Really,” Obi-Wan said, sensing Commander Cody and Captain Rex coming up behind him to investigate. “Does it have to be immediately? General Skywalker’s been through a great deal, I’d like to get him back to the Temple.”

“Sorry, sir. Orders.” He didn’t noticeably shift position, but Obi-Wan saw that his squadron all had their weapons held at port-arms, while Appo’s hands were close to his blaster grips.

Captain Rex saw it too, because he said, “What’s going on here?” His hand twitched close to his own blaster.

“None of your concern, Captain. Commander.”

“Certainly we’ll be happy to obey the Supreme Chancellor’s request,” Obi-Wan said. “I’ll inform General Skywalker and Senator Amidala.” He brushed his hand lightly against the hilt of his lightsaber as he turned, just to see how the clones reacted. He wasn’t surprised to sense the tension in the Force nearly double.

“I think we’d better come along too,” Commander Cody remarked.

If Appo protested, Obi-Wan didn’t hear it. Anakin and Padmé were standing near each other, Anakin nearly vibrating with nervous alarm. “What’s going on?” Anakin demanded as soon as he was in earshot.

“We’re requested by the Supreme Chancellor,” Obi-Wan said. “Immediately.”

Padmé’s gaze flickered to the clone troopers. “Are we under arrest?”

“I don’t think so,” Obi-Wan said, “but I do think they have orders to employ force if we resist too strongly.”

Padmé drew herself up indignantly. “What for? Has he said? This is absurd.”

“I told you so,” Anakin muttered.

“Is there a problem, General Kenobi?” Commander Appo called.

“No problem,” Obi-Wan replied, giving the clone his most harmless smile. “Do you want to bring your retinue, Senator?”

“I hardly think that should be necessary,” Padmé said haughtily, but there was a touch of nervousness in her voice, probably cause by Anakin’s clear agitation. “You know how solicitous the Supreme Chancellor is when it comes to Anakin.”

“Yeah, I’m sure _that’s_ it,” Anakin muttered, pulling the hood of his cloak up over his face.

Watched by the members of Padmé’s retinue, a handful of _Resolute_ ’s officers, and several squads of 212th Battalion clones, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padmé were escorted onto the waiting transport by Appo and his men. They were accompanied by Rex and Cody, about which Appo hadn’t raised any protest. Try as he could, Obi-Wan couldn’t get any sense in the Force of what had concerned the two clone officers enough to tag along.

On the flight over, he tried to make light conversation with Appo, but the clone commander only answered in monosyllables. Anakin sat on a bench next to Padmé, putting himself between her and the clones; if she thought that was odd, she didn’t remark on it. If Rex and Cody talked to each other, they did so over their helmet tightbeam; Obi-Wan didn’t hear any of it.

It was only after they had landed in one of the Senate Building hangar bays that Obi-Wan realized Anakin wasn’t wearing his lightsaber on his hip.

Padmé, who had received an automatic alert on her comlink once they had passed into restricted airspace, looked up as they left the transport. “The Senate’s in session,” she said, sounding surprised. “We’re supposed to be in recess for another week. Has something happened?” she asked, turning to Commander Appo.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” the clone said. “This way, Generals, Senator.”

Rather than being led up to the Executive Office, they were escorted to the Holding Office, located just beneath the main Senate chamber. Obi-Wan had only been down here once before, to brief the Chancellor on a tense situation on Bothawui before he addressed the Senate. Now, passing through the plain, undecorated hallways of the Senate Building’s underbelly, with unhappy knowledge of how few escape routes and how many Red Guards there were down here, he felt unease gather at the base of his spine.

Surely the clones wouldn’t have permitted him to keep his lightsaber if they were in real danger.

They stopped outside the doors to the Holding Office, which were open at the moment. Palpatine, sitting behind his desk, smiled and stood up when he saw them. “General Kenobi, you have surpassed yourself,” he said.

Obi-Wan thought, _He’s a Sith lord._

Obi-Wan was a Jedi Knight. By all rights he should have cut Palpatine down there and then. Instead he said, “A lucky coincidence, your excellency.”

“Really? I was always under the impression that the Jedi don’t believe in either.” He smiled beneficently at them. “Would you and Senator Amidala mind waiting outside for a moment while I speak to Anakin in private? I assure you that it won’t take long.”

Obi-Wan looked at Anakin. All of his earlier agitation seemed to have melted out of the Force, replaced by steely determination. “Anakin,” he began, turning a little to put his body between Palpatine and Anakin as he laid a hand on his friend’s arm.

Beneath his palm he felt the familiar curve of a lightsaber. Obi-Wan was too well-trained to let any of his surprise leak into the Force, but he allowed a frown to curve his lips.

“If I see the shot, I’m going to take it,” Anakin said. He gripped Obi-Wan’s forearm briefly, ignoring his hissed protest, and walked past him into Palpatine’s office.

*

Only his training kept Anakin’s breath and heartbeat under control as he heard the doors shut behind him, leaving Obi-Wan and Padmé alone with a hallway full of clones. He couldn’t keep from shifting his weight as Palpatine turned towards him, smiling.

“My dear boy,” he said, “I knew that the Jedi Council was too quick to declare your death. I told them that they should allow Obi-Wan to launch his rescue expedition.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said. “That would have been nice. I’m okay, your excellency.”

“Terrible,” Palpatine murmured, stepping close. Anakin’s fingers twitched against the trigger for the wrist-holster, which would drop his lightsaber into his hand. “This new general, Darth Vader – we know so very little about him. I don’t suppose he let anything slip to you?”

“While he was torturing me, you mean?” Anakin said. Somehow he managed to get the words out without stuttering.

“Well, that’s not exactly –”

Anakin swallowed. “Can I tell you something, Chancellor?”

Palpatine looked concerned. “Of course, anything, Anakin.”

He stepped close at Anakin’s gesture, close enough to touch. Anakin bent his head to Palpatine’s ear and said, “I know who you are, Darth Sidious.”

And ignited his lightsaber.

*

The blade went cleanly through one side of Palpatine’s chest and out the other. Anakin caught the Supreme Chancellor as he deactivated the blade, lowering him to the floor. A little blood came from the corner of Palpatine’s mouth.

He could feel the tension in the Force, Palpatine’s shielding starting to fray with death. When the release came, the psychic backlash was enough to send Anakin staggering backwards, his lightsaber hilt clenched in one hand as he flung his arms up as though to protect his face. He looked back in time to see Palpatine move his fingers slightly, a barely perceptible twitch in the Force.

“No!” Anakin yelled, flinging himself down onto his knees besides Palpatine in a vain attempt to stop him.

Every holocomm in the room activated at once, a pre-recorded hologram of Palpatine – of _Darth Sidious_ – playing as it broadcast wide across the galaxy. _“Execute command word RETRIBUTION.”_

Out in the hallway, where Anakin had left Obi-Wan and Padmé, the shooting started.

*

Appo and his squadron, in respect for Padmé’s position, had retreated to the far end of the corridor, leaving them together with Rex and Cody. Padmé, distracted, had taken advantage of the brief pause to call Bail Organa on her handheld holocomm. Obi-Wan stepped close at her gesture, aware to the centimeter of the holocomm’s pickup range.

_“– I don’t know, Padmé,”_ Bail said, his voice and image crisp and clear. He probably wasn’t much more than a few dozen meters above them in the Senate chamber. _“Palpatine called the emergency session about twenty hours ago, but we haven’t gotten any explanation why. We’re due to start in about twenty minutes.”_

“Twenty hours ago?” Padmé said, glancing at Obi-Wan. “That’s about when we left Mustafar, isn’t it?”

“Just about –”

He felt the Force shudder. Anakin’s voice rang in his head, as close and intimate as though he’d just whispered in Obi-Wan’s ear. _Now, Master._

An instant later the psychic backlash hit.

Even as he staggered back, all his senses overloaded by the sudden proximity of the most powerful vortex of Dark Side energy he had ever experienced, Obi-Wan was reaching for his lightsaber. He saw Cody and Rex both twitch in unison, that slight headtilt that meant they were receiving a broadcast over their helmet tightbeam, but by then Obi-Wan was already moving.

He swept Padmé behind him as his lightsaber ignited, the blade a blue blur as he batted aside laser bolts from Appo’s squadron. Part of him was aware of Rex and Cody nearby, the sounds of a struggle, but the Force whispered, _not the threat yet_ , and so for now Obi-Wan ignored them.

Six clones died in as many seconds. He saw a trooper produce a thermal detonator, drawing back his arm to throw it; Obi-Wan twitched a thread in the Force and threw himself over Padmé as the detonator exploded in the trooper’s hands. Debris rained down on them, bouncing off the Force-shield Obi-Wan had thrown up.

Into the ringing silence that followed, Obi-Wan heard a single blaster shot.

He looked up to see Rex, his helmet lost and his face bloodied, standing over Cody’s limp body. The clone was holding his blaster in both hands, shaking violently. The blaster came up to point at Obi-Wan and Padmé, then he forced it down before it started to rise again.

Through clenched teeth, he ground out, “Execute – command word – _retribution_.”

He fired.

Obi-Wan caught the bolt on his lightsaber blade, deflecting it into the wall behind his head. He snapped out his free hand, catching the blaster as it slipped from between Rex’s fingers. Numb, Rex was already fumbling for his second blaster before Obi-Wan, the Force layered into his voice, said, “You want to go to sleep now.”

Rex actually looked relieved as he slumped down against the wall, his eyes slanting shut.

“Obi-Wan,” Padmé gasped, taking the blaster he handed her. She’d dropped her holocomm. “What –”

It hadn’t even been a full minute since Anakin’s warning. Obi-Wan flicked his fingers at the Holding Office doors, relieved when they ground open, a little warped from the thermal detonator blast. Anakin, still crouching beside Palpatine’s body, began to straighten up. He was holding his lightsaber hilt. Behind him, Obi-Wan could see half a dozen holoprojectors running a loop, all repeating the same command that Rex had told them.

He pushed Padmé inside, ignoring her sound of protest, and stooped to pick up Rex. Anakin came to help him, white-faced with shock. “I didn’t know –”

Nearby – far too close – Obi-Wan hard a muffled explosion. Then a second. And a third. The ceiling above them trembled.

Anakin said, horrified, “Obi-Wan, _they’re in the Temple_.”

And the Force screamed.

*

“The building’s coming down,” Padmé said. Her voice came out utterly blank, shock wiping it clean of all emotion. She turned, aimlessly, to close the Holding Office doors behind them. Anakin and Obi-Wan were on their knees on the floor beside Captain Rex.

Padmé, still carrying the blaster Obi-Wan had taken from Rex, knelt down beside the Supreme Chancellor. It wasn’t the first time she had seen someone killed by a lightsaber, but the smoking hole in his chest still horrified her. _Obi-Wan was right_ , she thought, _Anakin was brainwashed by the Separatists –_

Dreamlike, she raised the blaster, pointing it at the back of her husband’s head.

From the man beneath her, there was a thin thread of croaking laughter. Padmé looked down at the Supreme Chancellor, the blaster forgotten.

Palpatine didn’t seem to have noticed her. He turned his head, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, and said, “ _Jedi_.”

Anakin and Obi-Wan moved so quickly that to Padmé’s eyes they seemed simply to have blinked out of one space and into another, crouched down on Palpatine’s other side. Anakin caught him by the front of his robes and pulled him upright, his fists clenched in the fabric. “What did you do, you _dopa-maskey gaggalak kung? What did you do_?”

Palpatine laughed. “If I – cannot – have empire –” he gasped, “I will – have – _chaos_. And we – will burn – _together_.”

“You Sith scum!” Anakin snarled. He actually shook Palpatine, despite Obi-Wan’s restraining hand on his shoulder, but the Supreme Chancellor was already limp in his grip, his head banging back and forth with the motion.

The next explosion went off directly over their heads, in the midst of the packed Senate chamber. Padmé felt the building shake, metal groaning, and looked up to see the ceiling above them come crumbling down. Obi-Wan thrust his hands up, the debris bouncing harmlessly off thin air, but his face was strained.

“Anakin, the Ouroboros!” he exclaimed. “It’s the only way – use it now!”

“But –”

_“Anakin, I can’t hold it!”_


	10. Epilogue: Fixed Points

_Rebel Alliance flagship_ Independence  
 _4 years after the Battle of Yavin_

“You’re getting good at that.”

At the sound of Leia’s voice, Luke opened his eyes. Carefully, reaching out with his mind, he let the various objects in the otherwise empty hangar bay settle back down to the floor, then bent his knees and came out of his one-handed handstand in a roll, bouncing back up to his feet.

Leia smiled. “Showoff.”

“You should have seen Anakin,” Luke said. He held out a hand, watching the towel he’d dropped on the floor next to his water bottle and shoes come drifting over to him. He wiped sweat off his face; the reason this hangar was deserted except for him was because the environmental controls were mostly broken, which meant that it was always either too hot or too cold. According to Anakin, that was the best way to train, since it meant that you never got too comfortable in any one location.

Her smile grew, with a hint of lasciviousness to it. “Oh, I did.”

“You know he’s old enough to be your father, right?” Luke said. _And he_ is _my father_ – He pushed the thought aside with a pang. He still didn’t know why he hadn’t run after him, but he’d been frozen by the words, unable to comprehend what Anakin had said until it was already too late.

He hadn’t realized until then that he’d never told Anakin his own surname.

“So?” Leia said, perching on one of the empty crates he had been lifting with the Force. She tucked the helmet she was carrying under her arm, a little awkwardly; since acquiring the armor she’d taken to wearing it around the _Independence_ when she wasn’t on duty in order to get used to it. There weren’t many bounty hunters or Mandalorians in the Rebel Alliance, but the few that Luke had met over the past four years all wore their armor like it was a second skin. Rumor said that the best eat, slept, fought, and even had sex in their armor – the latter of which sounded too awkward for Luke’s tastes, but to each their own, he supposed. Leia had to look like she belonged in order to make it past Jabba’s guards. “That doesn’t mean I can’t admire the view.”

Luke sat down on the floor in front of her, pushing his hair out of his face. “I don’t think I wanted to know this,” he said. “You think he made it to Coruscant?”

By mutual agreement, they had had no further contact with Anakin after he’d left them on Nal Hutta. At Leia’s request, he had memorized a list of rendezvous points for Alliance contacts in case his original plan didn’t play out. The Rebel Alliance would always take a Jedi Knight – for that matter, they would have taken any skilled pilot, which Anakin had proven himself on several occasions. He’d left over six weeks ago and missed the first two rendezvous. He’d either made it or he’d died in the attempt.

“I think,” Leia said slowly, “that if the Empire had been able to capture a living Jedi Knight, they would have executed him live on the HoloNet. Public opinion has begun to swing back to the Jedi recently. Someone leaked security cam footage of the duel on the Death Star – I don’t know why it took them almost four years, or who it was, but it’s been making the rounds on the HoloNet despite the Imperial slicers who keep taking it down. People are starting to remember that the Jedi were the good guys before the Empire slaughtered them.”

“No news is good news.”

“In this case, yes, but since Darth Vader finally reappeared, I doubt it will last.” Leia shifted the helmet, setting it on her knee. “I came by to tell you that Lando checked in on the dead drop.”

Luke straightened up. “He made it in?”

“He made it in.”

“And Han’s there?”

Leia made an expression of disgust. “He said that Jabba calls him ‘his favorite wall decoration.’”

Luke winced.

“That’s good,” Leia assured him. “That means he’s still there and Jabba didn’t, I don’t know, get bored and feed him to a sarlacc or something.”

“I know,” Luke said. “I just don’t like thinking of Han like that. He’d hate it.”

“He’ll be out of there soon.” She rested her elbows on top of the helmet, cupping her chin against her palms. “Do you still want to use the droids? I know Artoo can handle it, but you know how Threepio gets –”

“We need him,” Luke said. “How’s Chewie dealing?”

He hadn’t seen the Wookiee in a few days. Since Lando had gone to Tatooine, he’d spent a lot of time moping – for lack of a better word – and fooling around with the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s systems. The last time Luke had talked to him, he’d said that he wanted to be able to show Han how much better the ship ran when he wasn’t around.

“He says it will work.”

“It will,” Luke said. “It’s too crazy not to.”

“Well, _that’s_ encouraging.”

“Well, considering who we’re talking about…”

That made them both laugh. After a moment, though, Luke twisted the towel between his hands and said, “Leia, can I ask you a weird question?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Of course.”

“Do you love your father?”

Leia’s eyes went wide with surprise. Luke got a distant impression of pain and regret in the Force, but it vanished as Leia said, “Yes, of course.”

“What if you found out – I’m sorry, you can tell me to stop if you want – what if you found out that he had done something really bad?”

“Like what?”

“Like killing a lot of people,” Luke said.

She gave him a concerned look, but sat back to consider the question, setting the helmet aside. “When I was seven,” she said at last, “my father had to make a choice between giving up the current location of the Alliance fleet and getting medical supplies to a refugee camp on Alderaan – survivors from one of the colony world that had been devastated by the Empire. He chose the Alliance. The medical supplies never got there. Seventy percent of the population of the camp died. I didn’t really understand it then, but I knew that it was his fault, and I didn’t talk to him for four months. I used to go down to the refugee camp with my mother. That’s where she caught the illness that she died from.”

“Oh,” Luke said softly.

“For a long time I was angry at him,” Leia said. “But he did it because he had to – because of the greater good. He did a lot of other things, too. Good, bad, somewhere in between. Both my parents did, but my father was really in the thick of it in the way my mother wasn’t. I know he’s killed people personally. Maybe a lot of people. I don’t know how many. I did ask him once, and he said he didn’t know anymore.” She raised her head, though her eyes were still shadowed. “I still love him, Luke. He’s my father. He played with me when I was little. He taught me how to dance by letting me stand on his feet. He gave up his position in the Senate so I could take it. Of course I still love him.”

Luke rested his hands on his knees, his eyes going to the lightsaber he’d put down along with his blaster belt and boots. “Then maybe there is hope,” he said. “Maybe there is still good in him.”

*

_Dagobah_

The Clone Wars era Eta-2 _Actis_ -class light interceptor – known universally two decades earlier as the Jedi starfighter, but since then virtually forgotten – that hobbled out of hyperspace above Dagobah barely managed to jettison its hyperspace rings before entering atmosphere. It wobbled badly as it came down, skimming above the surface of the forested swamps that covered the planet. An observer would have noted that the socket meant for an astromech droid was completely empty; the pilot was flying the old starfighter cold.

When he brought it down, it was more of a crash than a proper landing; the starfighter bounced several times before skidding forward several dozen meters and coming to a grinding halt just short of a swamp that would easily have drowned it.

Yoda, who had watched the starfighter land, made his way cautiously towards it. After a moment, the hood of the starfighter popped open, revealing a bloodied, exhausted, and very much alive Obi-Wan Kenobi, some twenty years younger than he had been before he had died on the Death Star. He fumbled at the restraining straps, managed to get them open, and managed to stand up before falling slowly over the side of the starfighter to land on the ground.

Yoda crouched down beside him, resting a three-fingered green hand against his forehead. He could feel Obi-Wan’s life flickering in the Force, caught halfway between flesh and spirit. His robes were scorched from lightning and lightsaber blows, his body battered.

“It’s done,” Obi-Wan said, reaching up to grasp his hand. In his other fist he had a lightsaber clenched – Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. “He’s gone. He passed the test.”

He stuttered out a breath. His grip on Anakin’s lightsaber was white-knuckled. “We were wrong,” he breathed. “I was wrong. He is a Jedi…”

_I am a Knight of the Republic. I will live and die a Jedi._

The words hung in the air long after Obi-Wan had stopped speaking.

*

_Everywhere  
1 day after the Battle of Mustafar_

Command word Retribution was transmitted across the galaxy in a matter of minutes. Coruscant, Serenno, Mandalore, Naboo, Alderaan, Tatooine, Nal Hutta – before an hour had passed it had spread, not only to every corner of the Republic, but to the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Council of Neutral Systems, and Hutt Space.

All of them burned.

Palpatine’s kill switch triggered a series of commands hard-coded into clones, droids, and sleeper agents planted across the galaxy over decades and generations of Sith. Republic Clones turned on their Jedi generals and non-Jedi Fleet captains, Separatist battle droids turned on their organic commanders – even on Count Dooku himself – and sleeper agents turned on senators, planetary leaders, and crime lords. Carefully placed bombs and mines brought not only the Galactic Senate Building crashing down with most of the Senate inside it, but also the Jedi Temple, the Separatist Senate, the main Republic and Separatist shipyards, and royal palaces on three dozen planets.

Twenty-five thousand years of civilization came crashing down in a single day.

Chaos.

*

_Somewhere else  
Unknown_

“I think I’ve gotten all of it.” Obi-Wan lifted his hands away from Rex’s temples, flexing his fingers. His face was drawn tight; Anakin could feel the frayed edges of his mind in the Force. He might be powerful enough to be a consular, but he wasn’t trained as one, and this kind of work would have been rough even on an experienced mind-healer.

Anakin, sitting beside them with his lightsaber resting in his lap, said, “Should we wake him up?”

“Unless you’d rather wait for Padmé to come back.” Obi-Wan swept a hand through his hair, his gaze going to the hatch.

Anakin looked in the same direction. Aside from “in hyperspace, unlikely to die immediately”, none of them knew where – or _when_ , for that matter – they were. He’d regained consciousness a few minutes after using the Ouroboros to transport them out of the collapsing Senate Building to find that they were in the hold of a starship, otherwise empty except for a stack of crates strapped to the opposite wall. Inspection had proven that they held carefully packed bone china from Chandrila. In the Force, Anakin could feel the shape of the ship, a massive old clanker filled with thousands of individuals, but that didn’t narrow it down any. After Anakin and Obi-Wan had explained what they knew – which wasn’t much – Padmé had taken one of Rex’s blasters and gone to explore while Obi-Wan picked apart the hard-coded triggers in the clone’s head. Over Anakin’s protests she had insisted on going alone.

“No, let’s do it,” he said. “If we have to kill him, I don’t want her to see it.”

Obi-Wan shot him a sharp look, but nodded anyway. He touched two fingers to Rex’s forehead, saying, “Wake up, Captain.”

Anakin found himself leaning forward as Rex opened his eyes, his grip tight on his lightsaber. Rex let out a gasping breath, his hands going to his empty blaster holsters, then sat up gingerly, looking between Anakin and Obi-Wan. Slowly he pressed his fingers to the sides of his head, then looked up in astonishment. “It’s gone!”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders slumped as he relaxed and sat back.

“Any homicidal urges?” Anakin asked Rex, his hand wary on his lightsaber.

“It wasn’t like that, General,” he said, folding himself into a more comfortable sitting position. “It was just – orders, sir. You do your duty. A target is a target, whether it’s organic or a droid.” He shook his head, muttering, “A good soldier follows orders.”

“And now?” Obi-Wan asked.

“It’s gone, sir,” Rex said. He touched his forehead again. “How did you do it?”

“With great difficulty,” Obi-Wan said. He reached down to pick up the blaster sitting on metal floor beside him, passing it grip-first to Rex. “Welcome back to us, Captain.”

Rex hesitated for an instant before he accepted the blaster, then relaxed when he didn’t immediately put a bolt into Obi-Wan’s head. “Thank you, sir.”

He slipped the blaster back into one of his empty holsters, glancing distractedly around. Silently, Anakin handed over the holdout blaster he customarily carried, along with his collection of vibroblades and a pair of thermal detonators he’d found when stripping Rex of weapons.

“We’ve lost your helmet, I’m afraid,” Obi-Wan said apologetically. “Do you feel up to explaining the order you received? Retribution?”

“Yes, sir.” He hunched his shoulders a little, as if ashamed.

“Let’s wait for Padmé to come back,” Anakin said suddenly. “She’ll want to hear this too.”

“Good idea,” Obi-Wan agreed. He passed a hand through his hair, then rubbed at his eyes. He hadn’t had any real time to rest either, Anakin thought, twisting the Ouroboros around his wrist.

He clipped his lightsaber back on his belt and pulled the folds of his cloak around himself, staring at the hatch and willing Padmé to walk through. She’d been gone for the better part of an hour now – not terribly long when it came to searching a starship of this size, but every minute she was gone was too long for Anakin’s tastes. He couldn’t sense any threats, just the normal simmering anxieties that came from any large group of sentients confined together on a vessel for who knew how long. On the other hand, he was tired enough that he couldn’t quite tell if that was all there was or if the Force was too clouded for him to pick up anything more dire.

After a moment, Rex said, “Where are we, sir?”

Obi-Wan began to explain. Anakin shut his eyes and listened to the familiar, soothing sound of his voice, letting it lull him into a comfortable half-sleep. Rex had seen enough crazy poodoo during the war that he accepted the explanation with only a few questions, including the one that they were all wondering.

“So are we in our timeline, sir, or somewhere else?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin heard a rustle of fabric as he shifted position. A moment later he settled down next to Anakin, touching a hand to his back to let him know that he was there. Anakin leaned against his shoulder without bothering to open his eyes, smelling the faintly scorched scent of the thermal detonator whose explosion he had held off a few hours earlier. Usually Anakin would have been too embarrassed about the possibility of being caught sleeping on his master like a twelve-year-old padawan, but right now he was too weary to give a damn – too weary, and too relieved that they were both alive. The words _Order 66_ had never passed Palpatine’s lips, but _command word Retribution_ sounded much, much worse.

Eventually, the exterior hatch creaked open. Anakin and Obi-Wan both shot to their feet, their hands on their lightsabers as Rex drew his blaster, but it was just Padmé. She shut the hatch behind her and pushed back the hood of the cloak she had borrowed from Obi-Wan, looking between them.

“You fixed him,” she said.

“I removed the trigger, yes,” Obi-Wan said. “We thought that it might be better to wait for your return before he explained the command.”

Padmé nodded, looking cautiously at Rex as she came over to sit down between Anakin and Obi-Wan. “We’re on a refugee ship,” she said. “Mixed species being evacuated from a space station near Bastion, though some of them seem to be from other planets in the Outer and Mid Rims. Nobody seems to know how many people there are, so we should blend right in.”

“Evacuated why?” Anakin asked. “And where are we going?”

“Apparently,” Padmé said cautiously, “the war. But I don’t know what war, or who’s fighting, or what side these people were nominally on. As for where – ” She spread her hands. “No one knows.”

“Well, that’s encouraging,” Rex said dryly.

“I assume we won’t be staying?” She shot a sharp look at Anakin.

“I’ll try,” Anakin said slowly, glancing at Obi-Wan. He touched the Ouroboros again, but under his fingers it didn’t even hum in the Force, seemingly nothing more than dumb metal. “I think it has to, um, recharge. Or something. So we could be here for a while.”

“I see.” She shifted a little, putting another few millimeters between them.

Anakin looked down at his hands so that he didn’t have to see the expression on her face. _You don’t understand_ , he wanted to say. _I did it because I had to. I knew what he was going to do if he had the chance_ –

And Palpatine had done it anyway. _I came back to_ fix _things, not make them worse._

“Captain, maybe you had better tell us what you know about Retribution,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin looked up. Rex’s brow was furrowed with concentration. In all likelihood, he hadn’t been consciously aware of the command until it had been triggered by Palpatine’s pre-recorded order.

“Command word Retribution,” he said finally. “Execute Order 66. Execute Order 72. Execute Order 95. Terminate the enemies of the Republic.”

At the words _Order 66_ , Anakin and Obi-Wan glanced at each other. “Order 66 is the destruction of the Jedi,” Anakin said. “What about the others?”

“They’re contingency orders, General,” Rex said. “Orders to be executed in extreme cases. Order 72 is the removal of members of the Galactic Senate by lethal force. Order 95 is the removal of planetary leaders by lethal force. That’s all I know, sir.” He shut his eyes. “General, if there’s more, can you get it out of my head?”

“I could try,” Obi-Wan said slowly. “But I think I might be more likely to harm you in the process.”

Padmé had gone pale. “Empire or chaos,” she murmured. “Why?”

“Because the Sith are evil,” Obi-Wan said. “They seek nothing but the destruction of life, of order, of civilization itself. I would not be surprised to learn that he had transmitted that order to the Separatists as well,” he added quietly.

Anakin put his head in his hands. “I should have cut his blasted head off, I’d like to see him giving orders _then_ –”

“It was probably a kill switch, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “There was no way you could have known.”

“I should have. I should have guessed that he’d have something tucked up his sleeve, that son of a –”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan interrupted wearily. “It’s done. Don’t dwell on the past.”

“Can’t you change it?” Padmé said suddenly. “With that – the Ouroboros. Can’t you make it so that it never happened?”

“The Force doesn’t work like that,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s impossible to actually change the past – it would create a, a paradox. A self-defeating loop.” He hesitated a moment over the choice of words. “The Force always self corrects.”

“So it was all done for nothing?” Padmé said. “All those people dead, and for nothing?”

“I didn’t _know_!” Anakin said. He leapt to his feet, digging his hands into his hair. “If Palpatine was dead, then he couldn’t hurt anybody anymore – hurt the Jedi, hurt you, do _any_ of this –”

“Well done, Master Skywalker,” Padmé told him icily.

“You didn’t see what he did in the other timeline!” Anakin said, turning on her. “None of you did – if you had, you’d understand why I had to kill him, you’d _understand_ –”

Obi-Wan stood up to come over to him, stretching out a hand. He was the only who had a chance of understanding, through the Force echoes he’d shared with Anakin and Vader, but he didn’t _know_ , not the way Anakin did.

“Anakin, sit down –” he began.

He was interrupted by the sound of the comlink set in his vambrace beeping furiously. All of them turned to stare at Obi-Wan, who was blinking at his own wrist. After a moment, he said, “It’s an incoming holomessage,” and reached into his belt-pouches for his holoprojector. “I think it’s being transmitted to every comlink in range.”

He fiddled with the settings for a moment, then activated the holoprojector and set it down on the floor.

The hologram sprang up in a crisp half-size image around them. Padmé said in surprise, “That’s the Palace Plaza in Theed,” and came over to stand beside them, trailed by Rex.

Anakin crossed his arms, feeling a trickle of unease. The holoimage showed the front of the Theed Royal Palace and part of the Palace Plaza, just capturing the edges of a watching crowd being held back by a line of Naboo guards. More guards lined the steps, all the way up to the first landing, where one of the queen’s portable thrones was flanked by orange-gowned handmaidens and the members of the Naboo Royal Advisory Council, including – Anakin drew in his breath – Palpatine. Sitting in it was Padmé herself, wearing an elaborate black and gold mantua with diamonds on the breast. Her hair had been fixed in round crescents on either side of her head, displaying the gold headpiece that served as one of the Naboo monarchy’s royal crowns. Her face was painted white, with a golden beauty mark on each cheek and the scar of remembrance on her lower lip. Standing beside her was Obi-Wan, clean-shaven and dressed in gray and scarlet Naboo court garb, though he still had a lightsaber clipped to his belt. He stood closer to the throne than any of the handmaidens, and even in the hologram he had a pronounced air of danger to him.

“I don’t understand,” Padmé murmured.

Amidala’s voice carried clearly through the holoprojector. _“As you know, the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic are currently engaged in hostilities as we fight for our independence. Until now, these actions have been confined to distant systems and deep space battles. Today marks a turning point in the war, my people. This very morning, the Galactic Republic sent two Jedi assassins to take us prisoner or, if unable to do so, to kill us.”_

There were shouts of protest from the watching crowd.

Amidala raised one hand to quiet them. _“We are unharmed, thanks to our Queen’s Guard. Though we are at war, the Jedi have always conducted with themselves with honor. But no longer! By this act, they have proven that they are no more than the hands of the Senate, which left us to suffer beneath the yoke of the Trade Federation thirteen years ago. Already the Supreme Chancellor has asked for mercy for these would-be assassins.”_

_“No!”_ someone in the audience yelled, just close enough to be picked up the holorecorder. _“Kill ‘em! Republic scum!”_

_“I told him that this time the Republic has gone too far. There shall be no mercy!”_ Amidala said, her voice carrying over the shouts. _“Bring out the prisoners.”_

Four Naboo guards escorted a pair of Jedi onto the landing in front of her, forcing them to their knees. Anakin drew in his breath as he recognized them – Luminara Unduli and Eeth Koth, both Masters.

Both Jedi looked fearlessly at the Queen, ignoring the jeers and shouts from the audience. _“You are making a grave mistake, your majesty,”_ said Eeth Koth.

_“The Republic,”_ Amidala said, _“made a grave mistake when he sent you to kill us. Captain Kenobi, execute the sentence.”_

Unclipping his lightsaber from his belt, the other Obi-Wan strode forward. The blade ignited in a beam of white light.

_“Traitor,”_ Luminara said. _“You used to be a Jedi, Obi-Wan.”_

_“That was a long time ago,”_ said the other Obi-Wan, and swung the lightsaber.

Next to Anakin, Padmé gasped and pressed her hands to her mouth. Obi-Wan himself made a small, pained sound.

The other Obi-Wan turned to face the plaza, lifting a head in each hand. _“Behold the heads of the enemies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems! Long live the Queen!”_

_“Long live the Queen!”_ echoed back at them from the watching crowd, amidst cheers.

Obi-Wan tossed the heads down to lie beside the limp bodies, turning back to the Queen. Amidala rose from her throne, placing her hand lightly on his arm. For a moment she stood still, facing the plaza, and at last said, her voice almost intimate, _“Supreme Chancellor Dooku. Next time either send better assassins or don’t bother.”_

There was a ripple of laughter. The Queen turned away, accompanied by the other Obi-Wan and followed by her handmaidens, and vanished behind a line of Naboo guards. An instant later the hologram winked out.

The four of them stood in shocked silence. Eventually, Anakin turned to look at Obi-Wan and Padmé. Padmé still had her hands over her mouth, standing a little ways back from them. All Anakin could sense from her was blank shock.

Obi-Wan had his arms folded across his chest, his expression grave. He said, “Well, this is new.”

 

_the end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always wanted to write a Star Wars time travel fic; I've got scattered bits of concept writing using different time travel ideas dating back almost eight years. This is the first one that presented itself to me in almost complete form, though as most stories do, it grew in the telling! You can actually see the original concept [here](http://bedlamsbard.dreamwidth.org/819335.html) on my DW; most of the original keystone scenes mentioned there survived intact into the fic itself.
> 
> The title itself, "Wake the Storm", came from Vienna Teng's song [Never Look Away](http://youtu.be/V0KmI0b1oAs), which was one of the dozen or so songs on my writing playlist for this fic.

**Author's Note:**

> The lost warehouse of Sith artifacts on Odryn is from _Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic_ #29-30, "Exalted."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Wake the Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7434327) by [KeeperofSeeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperofSeeds/pseuds/KeeperofSeeds)




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